Annual Review 2004 - Wellcome Trust

IMMUNOLOGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE39• Analysis of data on the spectrumof bacteraemia in children, with datafrom over 20 000 children admittedto hospital. Of all hospital deaths,14 per cent were attributable toStreptococcus pneumoniae andHaemophilus influenzae, for whicheffective vaccines are available butonly partially implemented.• Dr Sam Kinyanjui and Dr Faith Osierwere awarded Research TrainingFellowships for Scientists fromDeveloping Countries to conductresearch at the KEMRI–WellcomeTrust programme in Kilifi.In South-east Asia, whichencompasses research centres inThailand (led by Professor Nick Day)and Vietnam (Professor Jeremy Farrar),research highlights include:• Demonstration that variable horizontalgene acquisition by Burkholderiapseudomallei is an important featureof its recent genetic evolution.• Continued translation of theProgramme’s research results intohealth policy. Biological, economicand clinical evidence from the researchpublications of the programme haveprovided a basis for a change in globalantimalarial treatmentrecommendations to artemisinincombination therapies (ACTs)(see page 24).• A mathematical–economic modelof drug resistance has been usedas a basis for the globalrecommendations on antimalarialdrug policy issued in a recentInstitute of Medicine report (SavingLives, Buying Time).• In Vietnam, the Programme hascompleted the largest-ever studyof TB meningitis (see page 26).• The Vietnam Programme has beenat the forefront of the battle againstthe outbreak of avian flu (seepage 23).• The New Adult Intensive CareUnit at the Hospital for TropicalDiseases opened in 2004, fundedjointly by the Vietnamese Governmentand the Wellcome Trust.The Wellcome Trust Centrefor Molecular ParasitologyThe Wellcome Trust Centre for MolecularParasitology at the University of Glasgow,led by Professor Dave Barry, carries outresearch on basic features of parasites,using genetic and molecular technologyallied with organismal biology. One aimis that such studies will lead to novelcontrol approaches.Much of the research at the Centreconcerns African trypanosomes,microscopic parasites that cause humansleeping sickness and the wastingdisease nagana in domestic animals.The malaria parasite, Plasmodium,and a related parasite, Theileria, whichinfects cells of the cattle immune system,are also studied at the Centre.In 2004, the Centre established a newpartnership with INSERM, the nationalmedical research agency of the FrenchGovernment. INSERM has begun tolocate its researchers in universitiesabroad, and the first of these INSERMResearch Units, led by ProfessorChristian Doerig, has been establishedat the Centre.During the year, a programme grantwas awarded to Professor Andy Taitat the Centre, based on his applicationof genetics to the identification ofimportant trypanosome genes. ProfessorTait’s mapping and annotation of thetrypanosome genome has beeninvaluable to the genome sequencingwork on the parasite being carried outat the Wellcome Trust Sanger Instituteand elsewhere.www.gla.ac.uk/centres/wcmp/index.htmlAdenovirus particles.