George Kasule

George Kasule

  • PhD Fellow

George William Kasule is a biomedical laboratory technologist with a Bachelors and Master’s degree in biomedical laboratory sciences from Makerere University, Uganda. He has attained about ten year’s working experience at Uganda National TB Reference laboratory/WHO supranational reference laboratory in number of roles and gained expertise in routine TB diagnosis, Quality Management System, TB drug resistance and prevalence surveys, External Quality Assessment and strengthening TB laboratory diagnosis in a number of countries in Sub Saharan Africa. He has a passion for operational and translational science research especially in HIV/TB co-infection and TB diagnostics (ORCID 0000-0002-2123-9614). He joined the Stool4TB project (www.stool4tb.org) in October 2021 as a PhD candidate from Uganda. His PhD research is nested in the Stool4TB project; ‘Evaluation of non-sputum based biomarkers for TB diagnosis among children and People Living with HIV.

TB is the leading cause of death among HIV patients. It is more challenging to diagnose TB among children and PLHIV because of the paucibacillary nature of the disease and may be unable to expectorate sputum for microbiological confirmation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These statistics can be improved through early, accurate and reliable diagnostics. George’s research will investigate biomarkers in non-sputum based samples of stool and exhaled breath for TB detection in children and PLHIV using about four novel TB diagnostic methods that have showed potential using sputum samples. The knowledge and skills he will acquire from this PhD program, as well as from working with a team of diverse skills and expertise in the fields of biomedical sciences such as immunology, molecular biology etc., are fundamental for operational and translational science and this is can be his basis for further research in developing better TB diagnosis tools in children and PLHIV that eventually be translated in policy changes locally and globally.