DR Pranab Haldar

COVID-19 represents the greatest challenge to human health, society and the global economy for a century. Although the majority of people developing the infection remain well, a small but significant proportion develop more severe disease that can be life threatening. The uncertainty of why this happens and in whom presents not only a clinical challenge but also contributes to fear within the wider population and hesitation amongst policymakers in determining the most appropriate actions for control.

As part of a wider team working locally and nationally, Dr Haldar’s research is focussed on identifying factors that can help address these critical questions.

As a Respiratory physician, Dr Haldar has first-hand experience of COVID-19 patients and their management. Dr Haldar is using his experience to help shape the policies and practices that have been successfully implemented in the care of these patients. He is also leading the data management group of the local research network and researching the blood biomarkers that can predict people with COVID-19 that are at higher risk of developing severe disease.

My primary research interest is the characterisation of important phenotypes of human M.tuberculosis infection to support development and evaluation of novel clinical biomarkers.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Latent tuberculosis infection and progression to active TB
• Phenotypic heterogeneity of active TB
• Biomarker development utilising transcriptional responses of the host immune system in blood and lung to inform risk of TB progression in latent infection and therapy response in active TB
• Precision medicine to stratify the provision and duration of treatment for latent TB and active TB
• Evaluating pathways for implementing new biomarkers in clinical practice

Verma R, Swift B, Handley-Hartill W, Lee J, … Haldar P. A novel high sensitivity bacteriophage-based assay identifies low level M. tuberculosis bacteraemia in immunocompetent patients with active and incipient TB. Clin Inf Dis 2019. In Press

Singhania A, Verma R, Graham CM,… Haldar P, O’Garra A. A modular transcriptional signature identifies phenotypic heterogeneity of human tuberculosis infection. Nat Commun. 2018 Jun 19;9(1):2308.

Singhania A, Wilkinson RJ, Rodrigue M, Haldar P, O'Garra A. The value of transcriptomics in advancing knowledge of the immune response and diagnosis in tuberculosis. Nat Immunol. 2018 Nov;19(11):1159-1168.

Abubakar I, Drobniewski F, Southern J, Sitch AJ, Jackson C, et al. Prognostic value of interferon-γ release assays and tuberculin skin test in predicting the development of active tuberculosis (UK PREDICT TB): a prospective cohort study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018 Oct;18(10):1077-1087.

Panchal RK, Browne I, Monk P, Woltmann G, Haldar P. The effectiveness of primary care based risk stratification for targeted latent tuberculosis infection screening in recent immigrants to the UK: a retrospective cohort study. Thorax 2014; 69(4):354-362.

Haldar P, Thuraisingam H, Patel H, Pereira N, Free RC, Entwisle J et al. Single-step QuantiFERON screening of adult contacts: a prospective cohort study of tuberculosis risk. Thorax 2013; 68(3):240-246.

O'Connor, B. D., Woltmann, G., Patel, H., Turapov, O., Haldar, P., & Mukamolova, G. V. (2015). Can resuscitation-promoting factors be used to improve culture rates of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis?. International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 19(12), 1556-1557. doi:10.5588/ijtld.15.0682

Williams, C. M., Cheah, E. S., Malkin, J., Patel, H., Otu, J., Mlaga, K., . . ., Haldar P, Barer, M. R. (2014). Face mask sampling for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in expelled aerosols.. PLoS One, 9(8), e104921. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104921

I am the Training Programme Director for Higher Specialist Training in Respiratory Medicine, Speaker at annual National TB courses and symposia hosted by the NIHR Heath Protection Research Unit (Advanced TB Course) and Qiagen (Annual TB conference at Royal College of Physicians).  Invited speaker at the Royal Society of Medicine World TB Day meeting and other National and Regional meetings.