BRC funding has supported the employment of a research nurse for 4 days/week to support Geosentinel (www.geosentinel.org), a network of travel/tropical medicine clinics initiated by the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). These clinics, of which Addenbrooke's is the only UK representative, detect geographic and temporal trends in morbidity among travellers, immigrants and refugees, providing information to travellers, and 'using' travellers to serve as sentinels for changes.

The research nurse collates and enters real-time data into the Geosentinel database. Contributing to the care of travellers locally and internationally and the network is also being developed for large scale epidemiological studies and epidemic intelligence and response. BRC support has also contributed to studies on Pentamidine usage, Dengue and Chikungunya, and to translational aspects of prevention of chronic rejection in organ transplantation and development of novel therapies against common viral pathogens such as rotaviruses which kill 500,000 children worldwide annually.

Important developments are taking place in Infectious Diseases in Cambridge, with the appointment of Professor Sharon Peacock as the Professor of Microbiology, and of Sergey Nejentsev working on the genetics of defence against tuberculosis. Prof Peacock runs an international programme examining the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and in addition, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is building a programme to develop molecular techniques for rapid microbiological diagnosis and sensitivity assessment, using novel genomic technology.