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Christopher Berger, MD, MSIMT is an assistant professor in the UCSF Division of Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine, clinically based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. His research focuses on improving tuberculosis screening, diagnosis, and treatment programs globally through the use of implementation science and human-centered design principles. He works with Dr.
My research is focused on the innate immune mechanisms that control M. tuberculosis infection. Autophagy is one mechanism that macrophages use to control microbial infection by targeting bacteria for degradation in the lysosome.
My research group focuses on the 1) Development and evaluation of TB diagnostics and 2) Implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions to improve TB care in high burden countries. I helped establish a TB/HIV cohort at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. The cohort has resulted in important publications related to the etiology and outcomes of pneumonia and the performance of TB diagnostics in this population. Also in Uganda, I helped establish the Uganda Tuberculosis Implementation Research Consortium (U-TIRC).
My TB-related research focuses on how HIV influences TB transmission dynamics in Africa. Characterizing recent TB transmission networks, identifying sites of ongoing TB transmission, and understanding how HIV influences TB transmission are all critical steps in developing novel, strategic intensified TB case-finding approaches in Africa.
The focus of my TB work has been as a clinician, education/training specialist, and global consultant for the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB. I am the principal investigator and medical director of the CDC-funded TB Center of Excellence, the Curry International Tuberculosis Center (CITC). The mission of CITC is to create, enhance and disseminate state-of-the-art resources and models of excellence and perform research to control and eliminate TB in the United States and internationally.
My research focus is at the intersection of HIV and the brain, with a specific interest in HIV-associated cerebrovascular disease and TB meningitis. The goal of my work is to develop targetedinterventions to preserve neurological health in persons living with HIV in diverse settings. I am currently leading a phase 2 clinical trial investigating the pharmacokinetics of linezolid administered with high dose rifampin in the treatment of TB meningitis in persons living with HIV in Uganda.
My lab focuses on immunity to tuberculosis, to inform the rational design and development of new TB vaccines. Our work includes basic studies of mechanisms of immunity and immune evasion in TB, using mouse models. In addition, we study human immunity to TB, and discovered that in contrast to pathogens that employ antigenic variation to evade immunity and cause persistent infection, the human T cell antigens and epitopes of M. tuberculosis are highly conserved, even in strains that diverged from a common ancestor thousands of years ago.
