Final SeroSelectTB Steering Committee meeting

All SeroSelectTB Consortium and Advisory Council members were invited to attend the last Steering Committee meeting held digitally on 12 December.

The EDCTP2-funded SeroSelectTB project officially ends on 31 December 2025. With pleasure, the project lead announced that all deliverables had been met. The remaining tasks to be completed in 2026 include submitting the obligatory final reports to EDCTP2 and national/institutional ethical authorities, and conducting financial audits. Co-authors will review manuscripts already submitted for peer review, and submit additional manuscripts reporting national data and experiences. Importantly, a detailed article addressing the SeroSelectTB assay development and accuracy will be drafted. The WHO pre-qualification dossier for regulatory consideration was submitted in early December and is currently under review.

Representatives from the partner institutions had the opportunity to give short updates following which the floor was given to Advisory Council members. Sustainability was a major topic at our final consortium meeting in September, and the Advisory Council again emphasized the importance of continuing our community engagement activities in the years to come. Kidist Bobosha, the project’s principal investigator from the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) in Ethiopia, will take the lead in maintaining communication between the SeroSelectTB partners. The project lead, Carol Holm-Hansen, will assist Kidist. Discussions regarding SeroSelectTB assay technology transfer from Lateral Flow Laboratories in Cape Town to the Vaccine, Diagnostic & Medical Device Research and Development Directorate (VDMdRDD) at AHRI are underway. Possibilities for technology transfer to proposed facilities at Kibong’oto Infectious Disease Hospital in West Kilimanjaro, Tanzania are under consideration. Assay production in Ethiopia and Tanzania will serve to increase accessibility to those in need, in accord with the WHO acronym “ASSURED”: Affordable by those at risk, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, Equipment-free, and Delivered to those in need.

The SeroSelectTB project website will be updated as activities continue, and publications will be posted as soon as available at https://www.seroselecttb.org/seroselecttb-publications.

It’s been a good run! We’ve had a degree of success and enjoyed the challenges. While we knew that the project would not last forever, we must do our level best and ensure that our efforts will be sustained. It’s been said many times before yet is worth repeating: “Everything will be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, then it’s not the end”. Work with SeroSelectTB will continue! Thank you to ECPT2 for believing in us and funding our project.

Mpaka tukutane tena! Until we meet again!