TB Fighters Make Esquire's Best and Brightest
List
By Katerina Pesheva Johns Hopkins
Medicine
Hidden in a lab, clad in plastic gowns, booties and
gloves, poring over lung-tissue samples, Johns
Hopkins infectious
disease specialists Jacques Grosset, Sanjay Jain, Gyanu
Lamichhane and Eric
Nuermberger don't conjure up the image of those you would
read about on the glossy pages of an
upscale men's magazine. But the four have landed spots on
Esquire's 2007 Best and Brightest list for
their work to find new cures for TB.
The rankings feature 36 revolutionaries, or "36
reasons for hope," among them scientists,
doctors, artists, engineers and a free-speech advocate.
At the Johns Hopkins Center for TB Research,
the four scientists are working to develop new
treatments for TB and improve existing ones.
Grosset, 78, received his medical degree from the
University of Paris. After contracting the
disease at the age of 24, Grosset decided to study the
deadly bacterium, and he has devoted much of
his subsequent work to testing and finding new treatments.
His work has illuminated much of what is
known about TB drug therapy today. After working almost his
entire career in his native France and in
Algiers, he joined Johns Hopkins in 2002.
Jain, 32, a pediatrician and infectious disease
specialist at Johns Hopkins
Children's Center,
went to medical school in India, a country where TB is
endemic. He completed his pediatric residency
at Floating Hospital for Children in Boston and his
fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at Johns
Hopkins. Jain leads a project to design a system that
visually tracks the TB bacterium in the body and
monitors its response to drug treatments. Jain also studies
central nervous system TB, which
disproportionately affects younger children.
Lamichhane, 32, a microbiologist, received his PhD
from Hopkins and was a visiting fellow at the
University of Toronto. He currently studies the genetic
underpinnings of TB and, together with his
colleague William Bishai, has identified several genes
involved in TB that may serve as new targets for
drug therapy.
Nuermberger, 37, an infectious disease specialist who
also has an appointment in
International Health at the Bloomberg School, trained
at Vanderbilt University. He completed his residency and
fellowship in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins.
Nuermberger works with mice and other models to
develop new, shorter drug regimens.
GO TO DECEMBER 10,
2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GO TO THE GAZETTE
FRONT PAGE.
|