Amita Gupta Appointed US Chair for India TB Research Consortium

On May 1, Dr. Amita Gupta, Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education was appointed US Chair of India’s Regional Prospective Observational Research for Tuberculosis consortium. RePORT India is a 5-team consortium formed to advance clinical and translational research on tuberculosis. Funded by the Indian

and US governments, clinical sites in India are partnering with US institutions to conduct individual TB studies. The partnerships for RePORT India are:

1. Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Government Medical College (Pune),

    National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (Chennai) and Johns Hopkins University

2. M.V. Diabetes Research Centre (Chennai) and University of Massachusetts

3. Blue Peter Public Health & Research—LEPRA (Hyderabad) and University of Texas Health

    Science Center

4. Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research

    (Puducherry) and Boston University Medical Center

5. Christian Medical College (Vellore) and University of Washington

RePORT International is a large multicountry study that includes consortia in South Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil. In addition to country and site-specific studies, all sites implement a common research protocol to establish a regional biorepository of well-characterized clinical samples for future TB studies. India is a global TB hotspot, accounting for 23% of all cases.

Gupta is encouraged to see novel partnerships and multilateral support for TB research investments. “After more than 40 years of little discovery, interest, or funding for TB research, we are at a nexus of advancement. With new molecular tools, novel drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines in the making, there is much to be studied to address a disease that has been with us for millennia and causes 9 million people to become sick and 1.5 million deaths annually. We need to ensure that we develop a consortium that is well positioned and nimble to lead and participate in critical discovery to reduce the global burden of TB significantly.”

Gupta was appointed for a 2-year term as US Chair by the principal investigators of the clinical sites as well as sponsors who are members of the RePORT India Executive Committee. Her US Co-chair is Dr. Hardy Kornfeld, and her India counterparts are Dr. DJ Christopher from Christian Medical College in Vellore (India Chair) and Dr. Vijaya Valluri from LEPRA in Hyderabad (India Co-chair).