Instructors: Sudhir Krishna, Reety Arora (NCBS); S. Prashanth and Upendra Bojani (Institute of Public Health).
Time: 2.00 PM - 3.30 PM
Duration of the course: 1st Oct 2017 to 15th Dec 2017
Days: Tuesday/Thursday
Class Room: Safeda

Overview : This course will have three core disease themes, viral and tobacco induced cancers and AIDS. Using three examples, the course will cover four principal issues :

i) Establishing disease association and causality       ii) Molecular and cellular basis of disease        iii)Building the spectrum of prevention measures                            iv)Going from individual to population health: Social and economic determinants, strategies for prevention and management

The course will cover a lot of history and challenges of HIV. For example the first two classes will cover a convergence of 3 distinct directions               
 i) the history of the discovery of reverse transcriptase in the early seventies ie a basic science approach                                                             
ii) the documentation in San Francisco in the early eighties of the first five deaths due to an unexplained phenomenon ie a set of clinical observations and       
iii) the characterization of the work in the US and France (5 papers in Science in the mid-eighties) which characterized the virus ie basic virology. The course will have a similar approach throughout and deal with the challenges of vaccination, drug therapy, discoveries around co-receptors and virus evolution  using a similar combination of basic science, clinical/population health and lab based virology.

Following HIV, using a similar approach we will tackle papillomavirus driven cancers and in the process cover some critical aspects of cancer biology ie ideas of clonal evolution, cell cycle control, cancer stem cells etc.

Reety will pitch in on both the retroviral and DNA tumor virus stories discussing the evolution of retroviral vectors and aspects of some of the fallouts of early vaccination controversies with poliomyelitis.

In addition colleagues from Institute of Public health Bangalore (N. S. Prashanth and Upendra Bhojani), will bring in themes of equity, tobacco control and help us position the virus stories in the context of real population health challenges.