Major UK University Lauds Research Article on Tuberculosis as a Significant Global Breakthrough

By Professor Arif Shivji, PhD Nottingham University

On 11th December 2024, St George’s University of London. ranked joint 8th for research impact in the UK and globally recognised, presented Professor Amina Jindani, leading international advocate for the eradication of tuberculosis, with its 2023/4 Outstanding Publications Award. With over a hundred peer-reviewed articles each year, the University found Professor Jindani’s article “Four-Month High-Dose Rifampicin Regimens for Pulmonary Tuberculosis, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine Evidence (2023 V. 2, 9) to be a significant breakthrough in the research on this disease.

At the University’s Annual Research Day Programme, where Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England was the keynote speaker, Professor Jindani, in the presence of Professor Jodi Lindsay deputising for the Vice Chancellor Jon Friedland, received the award from Professor Charlotte Clark, Director of St. George’s Population Health Research Institute. To a packed audience Professor Jindani gave a short presentation on the key features of the multi-centre clinical trial, which included the Aga Khan University, Pakistan.

“We are very close to reaching our target” said Professor Jindani, “But we need to prove that the existing drugs are still safe to administer at higher doses. Tuberculosis is a poverty related disease, and our best bet is to continue working with the existing drugs and finding more creative approaches towards its eradication.”

Amina Jindani was the third woman from the Ismaili Muslim Community in Africa to become a medical doctor, primarily on the suggestion to her parents by Imam Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III, a pioneer of women’s education since the beginning of the 20th century. Following her qualification in England in 1962, Dr. Amina Jindani studied paediatrics at the University of the West Indies at its Mona campus in Jamaica. She returned to Kenya in 1967 and entered the field of tuberculosis research where she worked under the aegis of the British Medical Research Council. This entailed interacting with leading global specialists in the field such as the late Denis Mitchison and the late Wallace Fox with whom she worked on the first short-course treatment trial which reduced the curative time from the standard 18 months to 6 months. Further, her work on the early effects of drugs on the killing of the tuberculosis organism, which was her doctoral thesis in 1980, is today, some 45 years later, still the standard method used globally.

An ardent advocate for the eradication of this disease within the Sustainable Development Goals, Professor Jindani is now working on the conceptualisation and implementation of a new multi-centre clinical trial aimed at the further reduction of the curative time, with the existing drugs in different formulations.

Dr Arif Shivji
Arif Shivji is an expert in the research, development and commercialisation of pharmaceuticals and associated healthcare technologies. He has worked for many years with Pfizer Laboratories and is today a visiting Professor at the University of Reading