Professor Gurdyal Besra FRS FMedSci

Gurdyal Besra is Professor at the University of Birmingham and is internationally recognised for his work on the bacterial physiology of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell wall. He has contributed to many areas of this field including, microbial pathogenesis, mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and drug development. More specifically, he continues to extend our knowledge of the mycolyl-arabinogalactan complex from M .tuberculosis, and has investigated their detailed biosynthetic pathways with a view to unravelling potential new drug targets. He also has a second highly productive research strand, which is at the forefront in the discovery T-cell antigens and the CD1 antigen presentation pathway.