A need for information: TB diagnostics is one of the areas the center will study Credit: Associated Press

At a time when the dangers of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) co-infection are increasingly apparent, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has teamed up with the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, to create a new international research facility dedicated entirely to studying these two diseases, as well as how they interact. The KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV will be housed within the grounds of the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban.

“There is no place in the world where there is a dedicated integrated TB-HIV research center, so this is really the first one of those. And what I think is so exciting about this is that it is right in the middle of the worst parts of those epidemics,” says Bruce Walker, an HHMI investigator who will lead immunology research within the HIV program at the new KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute. The region is ravaged by one of the world's most devastating TB-HIV co-epidemics, with about half of the local population suffering from HIV/AIDS. It is in the province's rural area of Tugela Ferry, where a severe outbreak of extremely drug-resistant TB was reported in 2006.

Construction of the new institute, a six-story building that will contain high-security labs for TB research, is scheduled to begin in September. In addition to providing a platform for testing new vaccines and drugs, it is designed to serve as a global resource to attract top talent and train the next generation of African scientists. “There are vanishingly few opportunities for foreign-trained African researchers to come back and do research in their country,” says Walker.

HHMI has promised funding worth $60 million over the next ten years to secure the long-term vision of the key HHMI scientists involved.

“This is a huge investment by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to go out and do, and it is entirely unprecedented for them to move into this direction,” says William Jacobs, Jr. of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Jacobs, an HHMI investigator, will offer expertise for the

KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute in the development of rapid diagnostic tests for TB.