Dr. Celso Khosa

Celso Khosa is the scientific director of Centro de Investigação e Treino em Saúde da Polana Caniço (CISPOC), Instituto Nacional de Saúde Mozambique (INS) since 2018 and he is responsible for the daily activities of PanACEA II in Mozambique.

Dr. Khosa has been a medical doctor and researcher at INS-CISPOC since 2013, leading the TB research program, implementing observational studies and clinical trials in TB therapeutics and diagnostics in adult and paediatric population. He is a last year PhD candidate in Medical Research / International Health at the University of Munich. Dr. Khosa is currently the Principal Investigator in several TB studies, including clinical trials for new drugs in TB and HIV treatment.

His main research interest includes tuberculosis, HIV and Comorbidities associated with HIV.

Dr Julia Dreisbach

Dr. Julia Dreisbach, a veterinary doctor, led the preclinical development of BTZ-043 and now acts as clinical project manager in the BTZ-043 Multiple Ascending Dose Study in Patients.

She coordinates in parallel all non-clinical activities like for example long term toxicity studies in animals, cold- and radiolabeled ADME studies in animals and the development of a suitable drug formulation for BTZ-043

Larissa Hoffmann

Larissa completed her studies in nutritional science in 2009 and graduated with majors in nutritional medicine. Thereafter, she started her career in the field of clinical trials as a study coordinator for regulated clinical trials in an in-patient clinical setting. After several years she took up a position as a clinical operations manager in a biopharmaceutical start-up company gearing towards the development of immune evasion vaccines and later joined Hipp GmbH & Co. KG as a clinical project manager for the management of clinical studies on infant formulas. During those years she completed several trainings in ICH-GCP, study management and medical writing. In 2018, Larissa joined the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at the LMU Munich and acts as a clinical project manager for PanACEA TB trials in the office in Munich and in the field.

Prof. Rob Aarnoutse PharmD

Rob Aarnoutse, PharmD PhD, is Associate Professor, hospital pharmacist and clinical pharmacologist, working at the Department of Pharmacy and with the Radboud Institute for Health Sciences at Radboudumc.

His research is focused on drug treatment of tuberculosis (TB), HIV and TB/HIV co-infection, the leading infectious disease killers worldwide. The central concept in his work is that efficacy and toxicity of drugs are dependent on drug concentrations achieved either systemically or locally. His research portfolio reaches from molecular pharmacological research to murine pharmacological studies, to pharmacokinetic studies in humans and clinical trials. In this way he develops a comprehensive translational research line that allows for quick application of relevant findings in the clinical setting. Typical topics of interest are adherence, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, safety/tolerability and effectiveness of TB drugs, antiretrovirals, other anti-infective drugs and immunosuppressants. His research is performed in The Netherlands, Indonesia, Tanzania, South Africa and other countries.

Rob Aarnoutse headed the Pharmacokinetic & Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Laboratory at Radboudumc for several years, is deputy director of education in hospital pharmacy for Radboudumc and is member of the Ethical Review Board Arnhem/Nijmegen. He has  been active in various national boards for the Dutch Society of Hospital Pharmacists (NVZA) and for SKML. He is member of the Coordinating and Executive Group of the Pan African Consortium for the Evaluation of Antituberculosis Antibiotics (PanACEA), is the chairman of the annual International Workshop on Clinical Pharmacology of Tuberculosis Drugs, and is otherwise well embedded in national and international gremia relevant to translational pharmacological research in the field of infectious diseases.

Dr. Francis Mhimbira

Dr. Francis Mhimbira is an epidemiologist and a TB clinical research scientist at Ifakara Health Institute (IHI, www.ihi.or.tz). He is the head of Interventions and Clinical Trials department at IHI. He has worked at Kibong’oto National TB Hospital in Tanzania (2006-2011) where he gained clinical experience on managing TB and TB/HIV co-infected patients. He joined IHI (2012-to date) and has been working in the TB research as a clinical research coordinator and investigator in a number of clinical trials, TB diagnostic studies and epidemiological studies on TB and co-infections in particular HIV and helminth infections. He was the site investigator for HIGH-RIF, NC-002, NC-005 and STAND TB drugs clinical trials. He also works with the Tanzania National TB and Leprosy Programme as a technical advisor to the TB Operational Research and Programmatic Management of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Technical Working Groups.

Dr. Francis received his medical degree from University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a Masters’ degree in Epidemiology from University of Melbourne, Australia and a PhD in Epidemiology from University of Basel, Switzerland.

 

Dr. Elin Svensson

Elin Svensson is a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud university medical center, focusing on pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic population modeling of clinical trial data. Elin holds a MSc in chemical engineering, and a PhD in pharmacometrics, both from Uppsala University, Sweden. The topic of her doctoral thesis was modeling of drug-drug interactions and exposure-response relationships for novel anti-tuberculosis drugs, partly within the PreDiCT-TB consortium. Elin also maintains a part-time researcher position at Uppsala University, and a close collaboration with the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is part of several study protocol teams within the IMPAACT network, and is a member of the WHO Task force on PK/PD of tuberculosis medicines. Elin’s role in PanACEA includes study design and data analysis, primarily addressing questions regarding exposure-response relationships, dose optimization and biomarkers.

Rutger Spoor MSc

In 2006 Rutger completed his studies in Business Administration at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and graduated with majors in Strategic Human Resource Management. In 2006 he started working at PwC accountants as financial auditor mainly for SME’s and in Healthcare. At the same time he started his study in Auditing at the Vrije University in Amsterdam.  In 2009 he started working for the Radboud University Medical Center as Senior Projectcontroller and Teamleader for the department of Finance. He helped Principal Investigators and researchers at various departments managing their projects.  In this role he started in 2012 supporting the PanACEA I project. He helped with budgeting, financial reporting and auditing the financial reports from partners. In March 2017 he started working as project manager on PanACEA-II, focusing on consortium coordination, legal en financial.

Dr. Lindsey te Brake

In 2012 Lindsey completed her studies in Biomedical sciences at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and graduated with majors in Occupational and Environmental Health and in Toxicology. In august 2012 she started her PhD at the Radboud university medical center, in which she studied the molecular mechanisms underlying (un)wanted transporter mediated drug-drug interactions and assessed the pharmacokinetics and drug-related adverse events of TB drugs as part of multiple drug therapy in TB patients. For the pharmacokinetic studies she spent considerable time at Universitas Padjadjaran and Hasan Sadikin hospital in Bandung, Indonesia, an important partner in tuberculosis research for the Radboudumc. During her PhD Lindsey also completed the training required for the register of professional toxicologists by the Netherlands Society of Toxicology (NVT). After finishing her PhD, in January 2017, Lindsey is continuing her work as a postdoctoral researcher, studying potential new and safe drug regimens against tuberculous meningitis. Furthermore starting from March 2017, she is working as project manager on PanACEA-II, focusing on HIGHRIF1, trial and consortium coordination, drug management, pharmacology, and providing scientific support.

Dr. Derek Sloan

Derek Sloan is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases at the University of St Andrews. He studied Immunology and Medicine at the University of Glasgow and worked as a junior doctor in Scotland prior to departing for Chogoria Hospital, Kenya and Hlabisa Hospital, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa in 2004-6, where he worked as a clinician with a specialist interest in HIV and tuberculosis. He returned to the UK to complete specialist training in Infectious Diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. From 2008-12 he completed a Wellcome Trust PhD fellowship on the Clinical Pharmacology of TB treatment in Blantyre, Malawi where he also served as a Consultant Physician in the College of Medicine. He currently serves on the British Thoracic Society MDR-TB Advisory Panel and is engaged in several clinical TB research projects in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Dr. Marriott Nliwasa

Dr Marriott Nliwasa is a final year PhD student with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His PhD covers strategies to reduce risk of early death among adults with symptoms suggestive of tuberculosis (TB): i.e. increasing access to HIV testing, TB screening in communities and health facilities, evaluation of new TB diagnostic tests (Xpert MTB/RIF and TB-LAMP) and their impact on patient outcomes. Marriott’s immediate future research focuses on trials of other new TB tests including Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra, digital chest radiography, IRISA-TB (for TB meningitis). Marriott is also involved in trials of new TB drugs and new TB drug regimens under the EU-Africa PanACEA consortium.