About the GRR-HTB

The GRR-HTB is comprised of teams of TB pathologists, TB scientists, and technical experts based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) in Durban, South Africa.

Notably, the GRR-HTB has access to anti-TB drug-treated or untreated flash-frozen, formalin-fixed, or RNAlater-preserved (with corresponding tissue CFU burden) tuberculous pulmonary and extrapulmonary tissue containing the full histopathological spectrum of lesions i.e., caseous, necrotic, nonnecrotic, fibrotic (healed scar), partial/fully calcified necrotic, cavitary lesions etc.

Our Goals

• Support innovative human TB-centered research through investigator-requested analysis of human TB tissues
• Foster global collaborations among basic scientists, pathologists, and clinicians

Rationale

• Early TB research from the 1890s to the 1940s was based largely on the study of human TB tissue and provided a vast knowledge base.
• Availability of tuberculous human lung tissues plummeted with the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s and 1950s. Conversely, TB research in animals progressed rapidly and analytical platforms were applied to these model systems. However, no animal model reproduces the full spectrum of disease as it occurs in humans.
• Many TB investigators are seeking to analyze human TB tissue but lack sufficient expertise and/or access to tissues.
• The GRR-HTB exists because we believe a major factor that limits our understanding of human TB disease is a lack of human TB tissue for study.

R24AI186591 –  A Global Research Resource for Human Tuberculosis.