Kim Chiok

Project Summary: One quarter of the world’s population carries latent tuberculosis (TB), which can turn to active TB when other diseases that suppress the immune system appear. TB cases increased for the first time in 10 years during the COVID-19 lockdown, erasing years of efforts to control TB. Individuals infected with both COVID-19 and TB experience enhanced mortality compared to those suffering from COVID-19 alone. No models exist to study COVID-19 and TB coinfections. We aim to develop these models to understand how COVID-19 and TB together worsen health outcomes. Developing models that resemble and reflect the lungs and a functioning immune system and that can be infected with the pathogens that cause COVID-19 and TB will help us understand how lungs work, how these microbes interact and their impact on therapies and lung health. This project opens the door for studies addressing virus-bacteria coinfections in the lungs, including complicated lung diseases like respiratory syncytial virus with secondary bacterial infection in pediatric patients.

Internal Mentor: Dr. Arinjay Banerjee and Dr. Neeraj Dhar

External Mentors: Dr. Boyang Zhang, McMaster University and Founder of Organo Biotech