Interview with Prof Simon Croft

Manjari Chakravorty, Knowledge Economy Adviser in Kolkata had the opportunity to interview Prof Simon Croft, Professor of Parasitology in the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), and the first and former R&D Director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), Geneva. Prof Simon was in Kolkata last month in connection with a UKIERI project on Public Health, developed in partnership with the Institute of Public Health (IPH), Kalyani and agreed to give an interview on the side of the workshop that LSHTM and IPH were hosting together in Kolkata.

Welcome to Kolkata. Can you tell me a little about your current visit?

This visit is aimed at developing support for the new Institute of Public Health (IPH) in Kalyani in West Bengal. I have come with three colleagues Prof Daniel Chandramohan, Prof Sanjay Kinra and Dr Richard Stabler, who represent Clinical Public Health, Epidemiology and Molecular Biology of anti-microbial resistance to discuss both the current Masters of Public Health that is being developed at the institute as well as future research plans with the institute.

You have been visiting India and particularly Kolkata over the years? How did it all start?

I first came to Kolkata in 1984 – that is 32 years ago to the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology and the Carmichael School of Tropical Medicine (currently Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine). Since then I have lost contact with a lot of people in School of Tropical Medicine, but I still maintain regular contact with and have developed research projects with the people of Indian Institute of Chemical Biology. I have been coming back regularly, enjoying the company and also the local food. I have developed a love for Mishti doi and Bhetki paturi!

Could you tell me a little about LSHTM’s present engagements in India?

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is a public health institute. We have a major partnership with the Public Health Foundation of India (PFI). The focus has been on capacity building and joint supervision of PhD students who return to India. This has been so far mainly in the area of non-communicable or chronic diseases and has involved Wellcome Trust funded projects as well as other initiatives. We also aim to work with PHFI to establish a Centre for Infectious Diseases.

There are other major research partnerships in areas of eye health mainly based around a group in Hyderabad led by Prof GV Murthy. There are research collaborations in Leprosy, in other areas of infectious diseases like leishmaniasis and in malaria. Prof Chandramohan, who is with me on this trip, has been involved in a clinical study in Ranchi on malaria for several years in collaboration with the ICMR National Institute of Malaria in Delhi. There’s been also an increased interest in the issues around non-communicable diseases like diabetes. Prof Sanjay Kinra, who is with me, has been running large clinical studies all round India on diabetes and nutrition and the impact of Yoga on health as well.

One of the reasons that I have been coming in for these past 30 years to India is because of the parasitic disease in Bihar, in Jharkhand, to a smaller extent in West Bengal and increasingly in Uttar Pradesh – a disease called Kala-azar or leishmaniasis. The Indian Govt has set a goal to ensure that this disease is eliminated, which means keeping it down to a very low level where the transmission of the disease by sandflies, very small inscects, is not possible any more. I am involved in two projects, one funded by UK DFID and the other by the Gates Foundation. The aim is to ensure that this disease is eliminated – not just in India but also in Indian sub-continent including Nepal and Bangladesh.

We get a lot of queries from young researchers regarding research opportunities in premier UK institutes including LSHTM. What would be your advice to prospective Indian researchers and what are the opportunities for them?

My advice to Indian researchers, who want to go to these institutes is to look carefully at the websites to see the strengths of the institutes that they want to go to, and also to identify the key staff in the institutes who they may like to do a project with and prepare a good and relevant CV targeting to those institutes.

Do LSHTM offer any scholarships for young researchers and students?

There are some current scholarships for Master’s courses and also some scholarships in the Diploma for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, but there aren’t any scholarships for the PhD programmes. That relies upon students getting, for example, commonwealth scholarships or other associated funding.

What would be your advice to Indian institutes who would be interested in establishing collaboration with LSHTM? In other words, what is it that you look for in Indian institutes that are looking to collaborate with LSHTM?

I think the days when there was concept of aid for development in India have long past. What we are looking for now are mutual benefits – that is a two way partnership. If there are strengths in India and we have matching strengths, then those are the sort of partnerships which we can build on for the future. As mentioned before, the UK Government will not fund developmental capacity building partnerships but there are opportunities to fund strong science. In our School Prof Sharon Peacock, with Dr Soumya Swaminathan (ICMR) were awarded funding for a very high scientific quality project on drug resistance in tuberculosis jointly funded by MRC and DBT. And that’s the sort of model which we will seek in the future.

So what are the areas where you see opportunities for research collaboration with India?

There are 3 levels: One is in Public health area, which we were talking about today. The other is epidemiological studies, where we have already discussed in meetings today that there is probably a gap in training and a gap in strength in India. The third area is the molecular sciences where there is interest in not just antimicrobial resistance, but also in the potential for new vaccines – not to be just trialled here, but developed in collaboration with Indian institutes and also with Indian industries as well. Academics and the institutes of research are very good at discoveries of novel vaccines, novel drugs or novel diagnostics, but you have to work in partnerships with private sector to develop these. I have worked with some Indian companies in the private sector and I think they have great strengths. So the academic – private sector collaboration could form part of future partnerships for LSHTM and other Universities in the UK with India. Drug discovery, vaccine development and diagnostic development are all related to my particular interests in the area of infectious diseases.

Is there anything coming up in London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for example, any new centres, programmes or new facilities that you would like us to know about?

There is a lot of focus these days in terms of ensuring that the programmes, especially field programmes, epidemiological programmes and disease control programmes, are effective and doing the job to improve health. We have recently established a new Centre for Evaluation to support this new focus to understand what works, why it works and how to improve evidence and effective implementation. Governments and donors want to ensure their investments are improving the quality of life, improving methods of controlling diseases, both infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases, as they need to show their investment in improving health is working.

I also think that there are new technologies in development that are going to transform studies around genomics. For example, at the moment there are some new handheld pieces of equipment capable of genome analysis of bacteria. This would enable the hospitals to have a quick read out of any genetic changes in bacteria causing infections, in particular determining the presence of the antimicrobial drug resistance genes. The rate of change is huge. The other thing that is really changing, not just in London School of Hygiene but in all biology, is the huge amount of data that is being generated from these genome studies, imaging studies and big population studies. There is far greater need now for statisticians who understand biology and biologists who have strong mathematical abilities. So there is a great need to develop and train up young people who are biologists and mathematicians at the same time.

About Prof Simon Croft

Prof Simon Croft has worked on the discovery and development of anti-infective drugs in academia, industry and public-private partnerships. Prof Simon’s research has focussed on the R&D of novel drugs and formulations for the treatment of leishmaniasis, malaria, human African trypanosomiasis and Chagas disease, including projects on miltefosine, AmBisome and topical paromomycin, all of which reached clinical trials for the treatment of leishmaniasis. Current research interests include PK PD relationships, predictive models for drugs and vaccines, and topical formulations. He works extensively with industry and PDPs on Neglected Infectious Diseases and with a network of collaborators in disease endemic countries. From 2004 to 2007 Simon was the first R & D Director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), Geneva and from 2008 to 2014 he was Dean of Faculty at the LSHTM.