Fit-for-Purpose Animal-Models - Working Group on New TB Vaccines

VIRTUAL WORKSHOP

Fit-for-Purpose Animal Models

20 January 2026

This interactive online workshop explored and discussed the extent to which current animal models reflect the human spectrum, from Mtb infection to TB disease, and considered their application to human-relevant outcomes (resistance to infection and containment of disease). Speakers and panelists also discussed how to use these models to advance candidates from the lab to the clinic.

Read the meeting summary.

Presentations for which we have permission to post can be accessed in the agenda below.

agenda

9:00 - 9:05 am

Welcome and Introductory Remarks
David Lewinsohn, Chair, Working Group on New TB Vaccines (WGNV)

9:05 - 10:10am

Panel 1: Resistance to Mtb infection
Session Chairs: Katrin Eichelberg, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) | Monika Looney, South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative

Presentations and Speakers:

The NHP Model: P. Ling Lin, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
New Approaches to the Mouse Model: Shabaana Khader, University of Chicago
Other Animal Models: Bjӧrn Corleis, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut

10:10 - 10:20 am

BREAK

10:20 - 11:10 am

Panel 2: Containment and/or elimination of Mtb
Session Chairs: Alison Kraigsley, Gates Foundation | Elly van Riet, TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI)

Presentations and Speakers:

The NHP Model: Frank Verreck, BPRC
New Approaches to the Mouse Model: Kevin Urdahl, Seattle Children's Research Institute

11:10 - 11:50 am

Interactive Panel Discussion
All session chairs and speakers

11:50 - 12:00pm

Closing
David Lewinsohn, WGNV Chair
Jennifer Woolley, WGNV Secretariat

Speakers and Moderator Bios

Björn Corleis, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut

Dr. Björn Corleis is an immunologist with expertise in mucosal immune responses to respiratory pathogens and the development of mucosal vaccine strategies. His research focuses on tuberculosis and viral respiratory infections, with a particular emphasis on host–pathogen interactions at the lung interface, comparative immunology, and the use animal models, including mycobacterial infection models. He is Group Leader of the Laboratory for Mucosal Immunology and Vaccinology and Deputy Head of the Institute of Immunology at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI), Germany. Dr. Corleis combines experimental infection models with single-cell transcriptomics to dissect immune mechanisms relevant for vaccine development and translational research. He has extensive experience in BSL-3 immunological assays and cross-species immune analyses and has established long-standing international collaborations supporting TB immunology and vaccine research.

Katrin Eichelberg, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Katrin Eichelberg serves as a Program Officer in the TB and other Mycobacterial Diseases Section of the Respiratory Diseases Branch, part of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In her role, she oversees grants and contracts focused on mycobacterial disease immunology and discovery and development of TB vaccines. Dr. Eichelberg's portfolio encompasses a wide range of projects covering basic immunology, translational and clinical research, product development, and clinical trials. Prior to her current position, Dr. Eichelberg held the role of NIAID Training Officer from 2009 to 2015. In this capacity, she managed and coordinated NIAID's extramural research training programs. Additionally, she contributed her expertise as a member of the NIH Training Advisory Committee and the Workforce Policy Committee, addressing global workforce-related training issues in the biomedical research community. Joining NIAID in 2005, Dr. Eichelberg initially served as a Scientific Review Officer (SRO) in the Immunology Review Branch of the Scientific Review Program. Here, she led the review process for grant applications and research proposals. Dr. Eichelberg's scientific background is broad, spanning molecular biology, microbiology, and immunology. Throughout her career, her primary scientific interests have centered on understanding host-pathogen interactions and the development of vaccines. She commenced her scientific journey at the University of Konstanz in Germany, earning a master's degree in biology. Subsequently, she completed her PhD in Molecular Microbiology at the State University of New York Stony Brook, focusing on microbial pathogenesis. Dr. Eichelberg then pursued postdoctoral research as a Research Fellow at NIAID in the Laboratory of Immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Ron Germain.

Shabaana Khader, University of Chicago

Dr. Shabaana Khader received her PhD in Biotechnology from Madurai Kamaraj University, India where she studied host-pathogen interactions during the mycobacterial disease, leprosy. Dr. Khader then carried out her Post-doctoral training at the Trudeau Institute, NY, where she continued studying host immune responses to another globally relevant mycobacterial disease, tuberculosis. During her stay at the Trudeau Institute, Dr. Khader demonstrated a critical role for the cytokine Interleukin-17 in vaccine-induced immunity to tuberculosis, as well as described seminal roles for IL-12 cytokines in tuberculosis. Dr. Khader then joined the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics where her lab continued to study the role of cytokines in immunity to intracellular pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Francisella tularensis. In 2013, Dr. Khader and her research team moved to the Department of Molecular Microbiology at the Washington University in St. Louis, in the Department of Molecular Microbiology. There she served as the Program Director of the Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis Graduate Program and Interim Chair from 2018-2019. Recently, She has been appointed as Professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Chicago, Biological Sciences Divison where she continues to reshape understanding of tuberculosis Immunology.

Alison Kraigsley, Gates Foundation

Alison Kraigsley is the Preclinical TB Vaccines Program Officer at the Gates Foundation and is responsible for developing and managing a portfolio of research investments to address scientific gaps and support the development of a robust TB vaccine pipeline. Alison has a broad background in infectious disease research and policy. Prior to joining the Foundation, Alison was a researcher at the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. Additionally, she served as both an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow and a Program Officer at the US NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). During her time at NIAID, she supported the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance, a multi-university research network targeting influenza research, surveillance, and pandemic preparedness and served as an ex officio member of the ACIP Novel Influenza Vaccines Working Group. Additionally, Alison was responsible for the TB pathogen biology portfolio and oversight of the TB Research Unit (TBRU) consortia. She served as an organizational consultant to the WHO's Global TB Programme and the secretariat of the Mycobacterial Panel of the US-Japan Cooperative Medical Sciences Program. Alison earned a PhD in Molecular Biology and an MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California and a BSc in Interdisciplinary Chemistry-Physics from Furman University.

P. Ling Lin, University of Pittsburgh Medical School

Dr. Philana “Ling” Lin is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. Her research is focused the pathogenesis of M. tuberculosis infection, immune factors that protect against severe clinical outcomes of infection including those vaccine-induced responses, and perturbations induced by HIV-TB coinfection in the non-human primate model. She has worked with the non-human primate model for over 10 years. Dr. Lin is also a Pediatric Infectious Disease Subspecialist at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where she also serves as the Division Director of Infectious Diseases.

Monika Looney, South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative

Dr. Looney is a postdoctoral research fellow at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI), University of Cape Town. She received her Ph.D in Pathobiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and conducted her thesis work on the co-regulation of methylation and small non-coding RNAs in the human macrophage response to infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. As a postdoc, she has focused in on prevention of TB and specializes in using single cell sequencing and multiomics to identify immune correlates of protection elicited by the M72:AS01E vaccine candidate. She has also been involved in characterizing the human response to antigens included in the TITAN mRNA vaccine for TB and is beginning new work to investigate the intersection between vaccine-mediated protection and natural control of TB disease.

Kevin Urdahl, Seattle Children's Institute

Kevin Urdahl is a Principal Investigator in the Center for Global Infectious Diseases at Seattle Children’s Institute and also a Professor of Pediatrics and Immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He received his MD and PhD from the University of Minnesota and completed a clinical training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington in Seattle. His lab studies TB immunity in the mouse model and he leads the Cascade IMPAc-TB consortium, which seeks to inform the development of an effective TB vaccine by advancing our fundamental understanding of TB immunity by integrating studies in mice, non-human primates and humans. His lab has sought to improve the mouse TB model to make it more reflective of human infection, leading to the development of the ultra-low dose (ULD) Mtb infection model, in which mice are infected with a physiologic infectious challenge dose (i.e., 1-3 CFU). His lab currently runs an ULD pre-clinical TB vaccine testing service, partially funded by the Gates Foundation.

Elly Van Riet, TBVI

Elly van Riet is a senior scientist at TBVI (TuBerculosis Vaccine Initiative), using her 20 years of experience in several aspects of vaccine research, to move the development of safe, effective and affordable TB vaccines forward. She has a background with an MSc in biotechnology engineering, a Ph.D. in immunology and postdoc projects on nanoparticles for transcutaneous and intranasal vaccine delivery and a clinical study on intranasal influenza vaccination at the Influenza Virus Research Center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (Tokyo, Japan). She joined Intravacc, a Dutch organization developing vaccines, first as head of the department Clinical Development and later as Program Manager of Innovation, Program Manager of Bacterial Vaccines, and Vice President R&D. In 2022 Elly switched gears to focus more on Global Health, where vaccines can have tremendous impact, at both TBVI as well as AIGHD (Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development).

Frank Verreck, Biomedical Primate Research Centre

Frank earned his PhD in immunology from Leiden University, the Netherlands, and started investigating functional macrophage polarisation in the context of anti-mycobacterial immunity in vitro and genetic susceptibility to TB in the lab of Tom Ottenhoff. For over 20 years now, he is heading the TB Research & Immunology section of the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands. Frank has been involved in vaccine research in EC-funded framework programmes under TBVI governance and in collaborations with former Aeras Foundation. He is member of the NHP research community of the Collaboration for TB Vaccine Discovery (CTVD) of the Gates Foundation. His team focuses on translational modelling of TB in NHP towards defining improved vaccination strategies investigating fundamental aspects of protective immunity, including innate and adaptive mechanisms.

NIAID does not endorse nor should endorsement be implied of the Working Group on New TB Vaccines, its products or services.

VIRTUAL WORKSHOP

Fit-for-Purpose Animal Models

agenda

Useful Links

About WGNV

Our Priorities

TB Vaccine Pipeline

Resources

Useful Links

About WGNV

Our Priorities

TB Vaccine Pipeline

Resources