Prof. William Jacobs Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA

William Jacobs is a Professor in the Departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Genetics. He is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his PhD in molecular cell biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Tuberculosis causes one in four avoidable deaths in the Third... read moreWorld and kills more adults than malaria, AIDS, and all tropical diseases combined. These alarming trends have caused the World Health Organization to declare tuberculosis a global health emergency, a distinction never accorded another disease. His laboratory has focused its efforts on developing systems to genetically manipulate mycobacteria, particularly M. tuberculosis. Current research efforts are aimed at identifying genes involved in the virulence of M. tuberculosis, identifying novel drug targets, and engineering attenuated mutants of M. tuberculosis that can be used as live-cell tuberculosis vaccines.