The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and the UK-based Wellcome Trust have announced the launch of an interdisciplinary institute in South Africa dedicated to fighting tuberculosis, HIV, and related diseases.

Made possible through grants totaling R$1.2 billion ($83.2 million) from HHMI and the trust, the Africa Health Research Institute will combine population data collected by the Africa Centre for Population Health on more than a hundred thousand participants with the basic science capabilities and world-class laboratory facilities at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB-HIV (K-RITH) to fight and eventually eliminate HIV and TB in Africa. Research already under way at the institute includes the longest-running population-based HIV treatment-as-prevention trial in Africa; an innovative project focused on human lung granuloma biology; and the application of genomics to better understand TB drug resistance. Partners in the effort include University College of London and the University of KwaZulu Natal.

"We believe this new research center is well positioned to make the critical scientific advances needed to improve our understanding of and advance treatment for these two deadly infectious diseases," said HHMI president Robert Tjian. "The unification of these institutes makes possible a spectrum of research previously unimagined by either the Africa Centre or K-RITH separately."