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Are you interested in doing research in biomedical science?

Would you like an opportunities to do research on tropical infectious diseases for a BSc, MSc or PhD program?

Please attend the OUCRU Open Day to find out more information

The OPEN DAY event is held at Oxford University Clinical Research Viet Nam (OUCRU) which located in the grounds of the Hospital for Tropical Disease HCMC. OUCRU is an internationally funded research organization conducting clinical and laboratory based research on tropical infectious diseases. This date provides prospective Vietnamese students with an opportunity to meet our current students, to see a demonstration of their project work, to visit the laboratories and to attend a short induction talk about OUCRU and its training opportunities.

Date: Wednesday 24th April 2015

Time: 9:00 – 11:30 am.

At: the meeting room 301 (third floor)

OUCRU

Hospital for Tropical Diseases

764 Vo Van Kiet, Ward 1, District 5, HCMC

If possible, please register in advance with the OUCRU Training Coordinator: Ms Le Thi Kim Yen, email Yenltk@oucru.org

Source: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2013/Press-releases/WTP054930.htm

Restricting the use of antibiotics is unlikely to stop the spread of drug resistance in typhoid fever, according to a study funded by the Wellcome Trust and published in the journal ‘eLife’.The findings reveal that antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella Typhi bacteria can outcompete drug-sensitive strains when grown in the laboratory, even in the absence of antibiotics.

Typhoid fever is transmitted by consuming food or drink that is contaminated with Salmonella Typhi bacteria, and the disease is linked to poor sanitation and limited access to clean drinking water. The disease can be treated, but there is widespread drug resistance to common antibiotics and resistance to the recommended, more specialised antibiotic therapy for typhoid fever is increasing.

Researchers at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Wellcome Trust Vietnam Research Programme, created 12 laboratory strains of Salmonella Typhi bacteria with one or more genetic mutations that confer resistance to the recommended antibiotic therapy for typhoid fever, fluoroquinolone. Typically, developing antibiotic resistance comes at a cost for bacteria, and when the drug is absent they are usually weaker and less able to compete for food and resources than strains that are not resistant.

Dr Maciej Boni, a Sir Henry Dale Fellow funded jointly by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, who co-led the study, said: “When we grew different strains of Salmonella Typhi in the lab, we found that half of the antibiotic-resistant strains had a growth advantage over their parent strain, even in the absence of antibiotic, enabling them to predominate in the population.”

Dr Stephen Baker, also a Sir Henry Dale Fellow in the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, said: “Currently, the control of typhoid across Asia and Africa relies on treatment with fluoroquinolones, but resistance is rising. Withdrawing or restricting the use of this class of antibiotics is one approach to try and combat the spread of resistance. However, the results of this study suggest that we need to think beyond this, as antibiotic resistance will likely continue to rise even if these strategies are implemented.”

Dr Jimmy Whitworth, Head of International Activities at the Wellcome Trust, said: “These important findings from researchers in Vietnam are very worrying. If confirmed, one of our main strategies for controlling drug resistance in typhoid will be ineffective. We will need to concentrate on developing more effective and affordable vaccines and improving water supplies and sanitation, a Herculean task for low- and middle-income countries.”

There are an estimated 21 million cases of typhoid fever around the world each year. If left untreated, it’s estimated that up to one in five people with the disease will die; of those who survive, some will have permanent physical or mental disabilities. According to a World Health Organization report, 90 per cent of the world’s typhoid deaths occur in Asia and the disease persists mainly in children under five years.

Typhoid infects the gut and bloodstream, causing fever that can reach temperatures of 40°C and constipation or diarrhoea. The disease can be associated with other characteristics, including rose-coloured spots on the chest, confusion and perforation of the gut.

Wellcome Collection’s winter exhibition, Foreign Bodies, Common Ground, opens today, offering a unique exploration of global health.

The exhibition brings together artworks including painting, photography, sculpture, film and performance, made during residencies at medical research centres funded by the Wellcome Trust in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam and the UK.

The contributing artists were given a simple and wide-ranging brief: to find out about research being undertaken and produce work responding to their investigations. The result is a series of varied, moving and humorous works, recording journeys taken within the complex realm that lies between scientific processes and local communities, often on the frontlines of communicable diseases.

Although the tools and objectives of scientific research may be broadly agreed, the social relevance of vital work is often shaped by cultural contexts, and it is here – among ambiguities, frictions and negotiated understandings – that the keen and curious eyes of artists can bring fresh perspectives. Foreign Bodies, Common Ground outlines the intricate web of relationships upon which the future health of communities depends.

Collaborative exchanges on data collection and use, the spread of disease and ideas, the motivations of participants and researchers, and the role of trust give rise to art animated by the search for connections between mind-sets and datasets.

Lna Bis drawings, photography, video and installation explore zoonosis, the transfer of disease from animals to humans. Her work is visceral, tracing the relationship between the consumption of animals and the conditions of their breeding, killing and packaging in Vietnam. Working with the teams at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, her work celebrates the messiness of the research she encounters and the sensitivities involved in gathering data.

Katie Patersons work takes a longer view. Her time in the laboratories at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge inspired her enquiry into genomic archaeology and the result, Fossil Necklace, is nothing less than a biological history of the planet. Each of the works 170 beads is carved from a fossil representing a major event in the evolution of life.

Elson Kambalus residency explored the different understandings of medicine and research in Malawi. Fascinated by the cultural complexities that divide and unite research teams at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme and the communities they work within, Kambalu interviewed clinicians and traditional herbalists, chiefs and study participants, community workers and pharmacologists, and health economists and musicians.

B-Floor Theatre are Thailands vanguard physical theatre company. Their performance Survival Games unpacked the challenges facing immunologists at the Wellcome Trust-Mahidol University-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Programme, from malaria research on the Thai-Myanmar border (where nine languages are spoken) to the worlds highest rate of melioidosis. The exhibition features footage and a photographic montage of the B-Floors research and performance.

Miriam Syowia Kyambi and James Muriukis work gets to the heart of the ethical dilemmas and negotiations that arise in encounters between different belief systems and cultural values in Kenya. In residency at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, the artists developed the Pata Picha Photo Studio, a mobile set with props. The studio will be operating within Foreign Bodies, Common Ground, alongside portraits taken in Kilifi and artworks developed throughout the residency.

Photographs from the workshops at the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, put a human face to data collection. Systematic demographic surveys are a cornerstone of the Africa Centres work to understand the HIV epidemic, and the nine photographs on display acknowledge the contribution of the Mtubatuba community to this work. Following workshops with artist Zwelethu Mthethwa, the young photographers whose work is displayed were given cameras and a task of exploring impilo engcono, or good health.

Danielle Olsen, exhibition curator, says: Foreign Bodies, Common Ground is the result of six very different journeys united by a generous and collaborative exchange of ideas. Placing artists within scientific research institutions is one small way of bridging discourses and practices, creating opportunities for self-reflection.

The exhibition asks questions about what we understand by global health and the wonderfully rich body of artworks on display offers moving and often unexpected insights into scientific processes and the community relationships upon which those processes depend.

The artists residencies ran for up to six months during 2012 and 2013 and were followed by exhibitions and performances in each country. More details of the process can be found on the Wellcome Collection website.

On 11th October 2012 OUCRU-HCMC hosted a unique evening of contemporary art and science. The programme opened with a short video art screening of three films by international artists Jeremy Deller; Phillipe Warnell (with Jean-Luc Nancy); Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy. This was followed by presentations by celebrated visual artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso (Colombia/Australia) and research scientist Dr Tran Nguyen Bich Chau (Vietnam) who shared their ongoing work and research to reveal how the fields of art and science can be interwoven. An informal discussion and audience Q&A was held.
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This event was co-organized by OUCRU and San Art, as part of Lena Bui’s artist-in-residency at OUCRU.

‘Art in Global Health’ was a Wellcome Trust initiative to set up artist residencies in the Wellcome Trust-funded research centres as a way of teasing out some of the more personal, philosophical, cultural and political dimensions of health research.
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Lena Bui, an artist based in Ho Chi Minh City, did her residency with OUCRU-HCMC in 2012. While in residence, Lena explored zoonosis research and the relationship between animals and people. She visited rural farming areas where researchers are investigating the human-animal interface of ‘high risk cohorts’ – people with high levels of occupational exposure to animals (farmers, animal traders, abattoir and market workers). She also travelled further afield, visiting small villages with long histories of economies based on harvesting bird feathers. The outcomes of her residency included an exhibition at Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum in partnership with San Art in November 2012.

Our other Art-based projects:

Art Meets Science