Tuberculosis researcher wins early career honour
Southampton researcher Dr Hannah Schiff has won a prestigious national prize.
Dr Schiff is the winner of the 2024 British Thoracic Society (BTS) Early Career Investigator Award.
The prize recognises her work on new diagnostic markers for tuberculosis.
She received the award at the BTS annual meeting in London.
Improving tuberculosis diagnosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is a respiratory infection caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Pulmonary TB is spread by coughing. It can be challenging to diagnose these TB infections before they have spread.
Dr Schiff’s research identified six proteins released into the blood that could be used in TB diagnosis. She found these can help distinguish people with TB from those who are healthy or have other respiratory infections. Her results were published in JCI Insight earlier this year.
Hannah is a newly appointed Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant in Respiratory Medicine. She is part of the Southampton Tuberculosis research group led by Prof Paul Elkington.
The NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre supported her recent NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer post, through which she has also won an Academy of Medical Sciences grant to take her work forward.
Prestigious prize
BTS Early Career Investigator Awards are prestigious prizes that are highly competitive. They are awarded to the very best research performed in the UK respiratory community by early career investigators.
The prizes are awarded based on the quality and content of the research performed, abstract submitted and the quality of the conference presentation. Clinicians, scientists and professionals allied to medicine are eligible to submit their work.
Dr Schiff said: “I was delighted to receive this award for my research, which could not have happened without the wide-ranging support and collaboration of researchers from both within the University of Southampton and across the world.
“Through further research these biomarkers have potential for development as a near patient TB screening assay. Such a test could help find the estimated three million cases of undiagnosed TB that is driving the ongoing TB pandemic.”
Image courtesy: British Thoracic Society