21 January 2009 - Geneva - Christian Lienhardt has joined Stop TB as Senior Scientific Adviser to the Research Movement.
Dr Lienhardt will manage development of the Stop TB Research Movement in line with advice provided by the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board and WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group. He also will liaise with the new tools working groups with view to harmonizing the next steps in speeding up research to develop new TB and drugs, diagnostics and vaccines; contribute to advocacy activities; and devise strategic approaches to key research stakeholders, with the aim of increasing investments in TB research.
"We welcome the arrival of Dr Lienhardt, whose work will play a vital role in bringing greater attention to the need for international TB research and for facilitating consensus on the international TB research agenda - attention to this issue is urgently needed," said Irene Koek, Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board and chief of USAID's Infectious Disease Division.
A graduate of the Faculté de Médecine in Strasbourg, France and the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and a former lecturer at the London School, Dr Lienhardt most recently headed the Clinical Trial Division at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. There he coordinated a multicentre clinical trial investigating the safety and efficacy of a fixed-dose combination TB treatment. Previously Dr Lienhardt developed and conducted a series of basic, translational and operational research projects on tuberculosis at the Medical Research Council (UK) Laboratories in The Gambia and as Research Director at the Institute for Research in Development in Dakar, Senegal and Paris, France. Notable among these projects is an international multicentre clinical trial investigating a four-month regimen for TB treatment.