RSTMH Annual Meeting 2022: Topical Issues in Malaria and Resistance

Our in-person Annual Meeting brought together members, Fellows, and supporters from around the world to share knowledge on key issues in malaria and resistance, and to encourage new collaborations.

The theme of the 2022 Annual Meeting was Topical Issues in Malaria and Resistance. The event was held on Tuesday 11 October and Wednesday 12 October 2022 in Liverpool, UK.

This was a fantastic opportunity to network with others working in tropical medicine and global health. As in previous years, the meeting included: Medals and Awards presentations for 2022, the RSTMH AGM, and the President's Address from our incoming President, Mr Simon Bush.

The 2022 RSTMH Annual Meeting was awarded 12 CPD points.

We were pleased to host the event at the Museum of Liverpool, which reflects the city's global significance through its unique geography, history, and culture. During the two-day meeting, attendees had the opportunity to explore Liverpool’s fascinating and diverse history in this magnificent waterfront museum.

Professor Janet Hemingway CBE

Professor Hemingway CBE has been PI on recent projects in excess of £200 million including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Innovative Vector Control Consortium, the UKRI funded iiCON Consortium and the ERDF funded Formulations programme and the BMGF funded Visceral Leishmaniasis elimination programme.

Professor Hemingway was appointed the Director of LSTM in 2001 and stepped down on 1st January 2019 having overseen a period of exceptional growth of the organisation. This included the awarding of Higher Educational Institution Status & Degree Awarding powers to LSTM. This new status will facilitate expansion of both the research and teaching activities going forward. She is currently co-ordinating a major initiative bringing together, public health insecticide, drug, antibiotic and diagnostic development in the North West of England, co-ordinated through LSTM.

Professor Hemingway was awarded the Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the Control of Tropical Disease Vectors 2012 and was made a fellow of the Royal Society and an International Fellow of the Academy of Sciences USA in 2010.

President's Lecture

We are pleased to annouce that this years President's Lecture will be given by Dr Ethan Bier, as part of our Annual Meeting. Dr Ethan Bier is a distinguished professor in the section of Cell and Developmental Biology at UC San Diego.  Dr Bier follows on from Professor Sally Theobald who delivered the President's Lecture in 2021.

Additionally, we are delighted that RSTMH President Professor Janet Hemingway CBE will also be speaking. Professor Hemingway is Professor of Vector Biology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She is also a Senior Technical Advisor on Neglected Tropical Diseases for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has 38 years’ experience working on the biochemistry and molecular biology of specific enzyme systems associated with xenobiotic resistance.

Dr Ethan Bier

Dr Ethan Bier is a distinguished professor in the section of Cell and Developmental Biology at UC San Diego. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa as a Regents Scholar from UCSD in 1978 with degrees in Biology and Mathematics. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School on regulation of immune genes in Dr. Allan Maxam’s laboratory from 1978-1985. He did his postdoctoral studies on development of the nervous system at UCSF with Drs. Lily and Yuh Nung Jan (1985-90) and then assumed a faculty position at UCSD in 1990.

Since joining the faculty at UCSD, Dr. Bier has studied basic developmental patterning processes that have been highly conserved during evolution and has also used fruit flies to study mechanisms of human disease, focusing on understanding the mechanisms by which bacterial toxins contribute to breaching host barriers. Most recently, the Bier lab has developed a novel genetic method referred to as active genetics which allows parents to transmit a desired trait to nearly all their offspring rather than to only 50% of their progeny as occurs with traditional Mendelian inheritance. Active genetics promises to revolutionize control of vector borne diseases (e.g., malaria) and pests, to reverse resistance to insecticides, scrub antibiotic resistance from bacterial pathogens, and to greatly accelerate genetic manipulation of organisms for medical and agricultural research.

Speakers

• Dr Adam Roberts, Reader and AMR lead at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
• Amina Ismael, Community Mobiliser at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine working on the Liverpool Vaccine Equity Project
• Dr Arjen Dondorp, Infectious Diseases and Intensive Care Physician, Professor of Tropical Medicine at University of Oxford and at Mahidol University and Deputy Director, Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.  
• Professor Sir Brian Greenwood, Manson Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Dr David Weetman, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
• Professor Hilary Ranson, Dean of Research Culture & Integrity, Professor of Medical Entomology LSTM  
• Dr Moses R. Kamya, Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Uganda, and Executive Director, Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration (IDRC).
• Professor Philippe Guérin, Director of IDDO and The WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN)
• Rocio Villacorta Linaza, Project Manager, the STRESST project (Antimicrobial Stewardship in Hospitals, Resistance Selection and Transfer in a One Health Context)