Antonio Martin

Name:Martin Antonio BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD, DLSHTM
Title:Molecular Biologist & Head TB diagnostics laboratory
Email:mantonio [at] mrc [dot] gm

 

Background: Dr Martin Antonio graduated from the University of Glasgow (www.gla.ac.uk), Scotland with a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry (1991), MSc from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (www.lshtm.ac.uk), UK (1993) and PhD from Barts and The London School of Medicine & Dentistry (www.smd.qmul.ac.uk), University of London, UK (1997). Postdoctoral training were at University of Sheffield (www.sheffield.ac.uk), UK (1997-2000), Queens University of Belfast (www.qub.ac.uk), Northern Ireland, UK (2000-2001) and University of Birmingham (www.birmingham.ac.uk) UK (2001-2005).

Dr Antonio joined the MRC Unit in January 2005 and Heads both the Molecular Microbiology and the Mycobacteriology Laboratories. He is a Honorary Lecturer at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK and also the Director of the WHO Regional Reference Laboratory (West Africa) for invasive bacterial diseases (pneumoWAR).

Research Interest: Dr Antonio’s research focuses on the leverage of new molecular technologies in diagnosis of tropical infections, investigation of microbial transmission & clinical trials and leads a wide range of projects dealing with clinical, epidemiological and laboratory science leading to large scale intervention clinical trials in West Africa. His group also provides direct technical assistance by conducting surveillance on invasive bacterial disease in West & Central Africa and participating in consultations and meetings with WHO, UNICEF, the GAVI Alliance and other partners.

Current Research Projects:

Invasiveness of Bacteria Pathogens in West Africa: The focus of my research is to understand the effects of conjugate vaccines including pneumococcal vaccines on the population biology of bacterial pathogens in Africa. My group uses start-of-art methodologies (e.g. PCR, real-time PCR, cloning, DNA microarrays, DNA sequencing, multilocus sequence typing, metagenomics and whole genome sequence) for identifying and deciphering the genetic diversity of selected bacterial isolates (e.g. diseased versus carriage) common in West Africa and determining its epidemiological impact. Pathogens studied include Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella enteritidis, Neisseria meningitides and Haemophilus influenzae.

Diagnosis & Molecular Epidemiology of TB in The Gambia: Mycobacteriology group conducts testing for isolation and identification of all Mycobacterium species including Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. We provide diagnosis services to the MRC clinic and also to our field cohorts. My research focus includes evaluation of tools for the control of tuberculosis and molecular epidemiology including spoligotyping, RFLP and 16S rDNA sequencing. The laboratory also provides specialist training in TB culture, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and genotyping in the West African Sub-region

Multicentre studies: Dr Antonio is also the Site- Co PI and the Laboratory Director for two multicentre studies in Asia and Africa. Included in the objectives of these projects are the leverage new molecular technologies to more efficiently and more completely elucidate the agents responsible for enteric disease (Global Enteric Multicentre study: GEMs) and pneumonia (Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health: PERCH),

Group Members: Dr Michel Dione, Dr Sheikh Jarju, Jacob Otu, Usman Ikumapayi, Abdoulie Bojang, Ebenezer Foster-Nyarko, Oumie Secka, Tutty Faal-Jawara, Kate Okoi, Eunice Machuka, Isatu Drammeh, Peggy-Estelle Tientcheu.

Current PhD Students:

  1. Miss Brenda Kwambana (MRC PhD studentship): Effect on pneumococcal conjugate vaccine of the nasopharyngeal microbiome.  University of Leicester UK;
  2. Ousman Secka (MRC PhD studentship part-time): Genotypes of Helicobacter pylori in The Gambia. Open University UK.
  3. Chinelo Ebruke (MRC PhD studentship): Population structure of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 1 in West Africa. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine;

Past visiting students

  1. Eric Sampane-Donkor (Commonwealth PhD scholarship): Invasiveness of Streptococcus pneumoniae in West Africa. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  2. Michel Dione (Flemish PhD scholarship): Molecular Characterization of Human and Animal Non-typhoid Salmonella. Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp Belgium
  3. Miss Tiffany Williams: Comparative Studies of the Population Structure and Virulence of Streptococcus pneumoniae Serotype 1 from Africa, North America and Europe. Baylor College of Medicine, USA.
  4. John O’Callaghan, Medical Student (King’s College London);
  5. Cassie Gunnis, (MSc student) London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
  6. Chisty Iftekhar, (MSc student) London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
  7. Ms Laurence, Tremolet, MSc student (ESTBB, Catholic University of Lyons, France)
  8. Tara Sealy, (MSc student) London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
  9. Ms Isatou Drammeh, BSc student (University of The Gambia
  10. Ms Penda Suso, BSc student (University of The Gambia
  11. Alberta Davis (University of Westminister)
  12. Jessica Owugha BSc student University of Manchester

Past Visiting Researchers; Dr Tope Alonge (University of Ibadan, Nigeria), Dr Hannah Dada-Adegbola (University of Ibadan, Nigeria), Dr Ype De Jong (New York)

Collaborators: Professor Mark Pallen (Birmingham, UK), Dr Bouke de Jong (ITM, Belgium), Professor Brendan Wren (LSHTM), Professor Mike Barer (Leicester, UK), Professor Brian Greenwood (LSHTM), Professor James Nataro (CVD, Baltimore USA), Professor Mike Levin (CVD, Baltimore USA), Professor George Weinstock (Wash U, USA), Dr Jason Hinds (London), Dr Stephen Bentley (Sanger, UK), Professor Joel Ernst, NYU, USA), Dr Jason Mwenda (WHO AFRO),  Professor Orin Levin (John Hopkins, Baltimore), Professor Souleymane Mboup (Senegal), Professor  Helena Käyhty (Finland), Dr Dean Everest (Malawi), Dr Eric Houpt (USA), Professor David Murdock (New Zealand), Professor Samba Sow (Mali), Dr Orin Levin (John Hopkins, US)

Peer-reviewed Publications

2011

  1. Brenda A Kwambana, Michael R Barer, Christian Bottomley, Richard A Adegbola and Martin Antonio. Early acquisition and high nasopharyngeal co-colonisation by Streptococcus pneumoniae and three respiratory pathogens amongst Gambian new-borns and infants (2011) BMC Infectious Diseases in press
  2. Michel M. Dione, Usman Ikumapayi, Debasish Saha, Nuredin Ibrahim Mohammed, Richard A. Adegbola, Stanny Geerts, Margareta Ieven, Martin Antonio (2011) Antimicrobial resistance and virulence genes of non-typhoidal Salmonellaisolates from children, animals and food sources in The Gambia and Senegal. JIDC in press
  3. Eric Donkor, Cynthia Bishop, Martin Antonio, Brendan Wren, William Hanage (2011). Large amounts of recombination among pneumococci in The Gambia. mBio in press
  4. Michel M. Dione, Stanny Geerts and Martin Antonio (2011). Identification of novel clones of multiply antibiotic-resistant Salmonella recovered from poultry in Southern Senegal by multilocus sequence typing. JIDC in press
  5. Ousman Secka; Martin Antonio; Mary Tapgun; Douglas Berg; Christian Bottomley; Thomas-Njie Vivat; Robert Walton; Corrah Tumani; Richard Adegbola; Julian Thomas. PCR-based genotyping of Helicobacter pylori of Gambian children and adults directly from biopsy specimens and bacterial cultures Gut Pathogens 2011, 3:5
  6. Michel M Dione, Usman Ikumapayi, Debasish Saha, John Townend, Richard A. Adegbola, Stanny Geerts, Martin Antonio. Clonal differences between Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS)strain types from humans and those isolated from animals living in close contact in rural area of The Gambia PLoS Neglected disease  (2011) in press
  7. Ota MO, Oluwalana C, Howie SR, Gomez M, Ogunniyi AD, Mendy-Gomez AL, Owolabi O, Mureithi MW, Townend J, Secka O, Antonio M, Sutherland JS, Adegbola RA. Antibody and T-cell responses during acute and convalescent stages of invasive pneumococcal disease.. Int J Infect Dis. 2011 Apr;15(4):e282-8.
  8. Ota MO, Akinsola A, Townend J, Antonio M, Enwere G, Nsekpong D, Bojang A, Saaka M, Burton RL, Zaman A, Goldblatt D, Adegbola RA. The immunogenicity and impact on nasopharyngeal carriage of fewer doses of conjugate pneumococcal vaccine immunization schedule. Vaccine. 2011 Apr 5;29(16):2999-3007.
  9. Kwambana BA, Mohammed NI, Jeffries D, Barer M, Adegbola RA, Antonio M: Differential effects of frozen storage on the molecular detection of bacterial taxa that inhabit the nasopharynx. BMC Clin Pathol. 2011 Jan 24; 11(1):2

2010

  1. Melin M, Trzciński K, Antonio M, Meri S, Adegbola R, Kaijalainen T, Käyhty H, Väkeväinen M.. Serotype-related variation in susceptibility to complement deposition and opsonophagocytosis among clinical isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Infect Immun. 2010 Dec;78(12):5252-61
  2. De Jong BC, Antonio M, Gagneux S (2010) Mycobacterium africanum - Review of an Important Cause of Human Tuberculosis in West; PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2010 September; 4(9): e744
  3. Philip C Hill, John Townend, Martin Antonio,  Biodun Akinsanya, Chinelo Ebruke, George Lahai, Brian M Greenwood, Richard A Adegbola (2010) Transmission of Streptococcus pneumoniae in rural Gambian villages – a longitudinal study; Clin Infect Dis. 2010 Jun 1;50(11):1468-76
  4. Bouke C. de Jong, Abdulrahman Hammond, Jacob Otu, Martin Antonio, Philip C. Hill, Richard A. Adegbola, Martin Ota. Use of specific antigens in an ELISPOT assay to detect latency with different sub-species within the M.tuberculosis complex. BMC Infect Dis. 2010 Jan 19;10:11
  5. Bouke C. de Jong, Ifedayo Adetifa, Brigitte Walther, Philip C. Hill, Martin Antonio, Martin Ota & Richard A. Adegbola. Differences between tuberculosis cases infected with Mycobacterium africanum, West African type 2, relative to Euro-American Mycobacterium Tuberculosis: an update. FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol. 2010 Feb;58(1):102-5

2009

  1. de Jong BC, Antonio M, Awine T, Ogungbemi K, de Jong YP , Gagneux S, DeRiemer K, Rastogi N, , Borgdorff MW, Hill PC, Adegbola RA. Use of spoligotyping and large sequence polymorphisms to study the population structure of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in a cohort study of consecutive smear-positive tuberculosis cases in The Gambia. Clin Microbiol. 2009: 47(4):994-100
  2. Antonio M, Oluwalana C, Secka O, Corrah T, Howie S, Adegbola RA. Exogenous re-infection by a novel Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 14 as a cause of recurrent meningitis in a child from The Gambia. Ann Clin Microbiol Antimicrob. 2009: 20;8(1):3
  3. Antonio M, Hakeem I, Sankareh K, Cheung YB & Adegbola RA. Evaluation of sequential multiplex PCR for direct detection of multiple serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae from nasopharyngeal secretions J Med Microbiol 2009 58 (3): p. 296-302
  4. Black GF, Thiel BA, Ota MO, Parida SK, Adegbola R, Boom WH, Dockrell HM, Franken KL, Friggen AH, Hill PC, Klein MR, Lalor MK, Mayanja H, Schoolnik G, Stanley K, Weldingh K, Kaufmann SH, Walzl G, Ottenhoff TH; GCGH Biomarkers for TB Consortium. Immunogenicity of novel DosR regulon-encoded candidate antigens of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in three high-burden populations in Africa. Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2009;16(8):1203-12

2008

  1. Antonio M, Hakeem I, Awine T, Secka O, Sankareh K, Nsekpong D, Lahai G, Akisanya A, Egere U, Akinsola A, Yin Bun Cheung et. al . Seasonality and outbreak of a predominant Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 1 clone from The Gambia: Expansion of ST217 hypervirulent clonal complex in West Africa. BMC Microbiol (2008) 8:198
  2. Antonio M, Dada-Adegbola H, Ekow Biney E, Awine T, O’Callaghan J, Pfluger V, Enwere G, Okoko B, Oluwalana C, Vaughan et.al. Molecular characteristics and epidemiology of pneumococci obtained from Gambian children aged 2-29 monthswith invasive pneumococcal disease during a trial of a 9-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. BMC infec dis.(2008), 8:81
  3. Otu JK, Antonio M, Cheng YB, et. al. Comparative Evaluation of BACTEC MGIT 960 System with BACTEC 9000 MB system and Solid medium for isolation of mycobacteria in The Gambia. J Infect Developing countries 2008; 2(3):200-205
  4. de Jong BC, Hill PC, Aiken A, Awine T, Antonio M, Adetifa IM, Jackson-Sillah DJ, Fox A, DeRiemer K, Gagneux S, Borgdorff MW, McAdam KPWJ, Corrah T, Small PM, Adegbola RA. Progression to active tuberculosis varies by Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineage in The Gambia. J Infect Dis. 2008 Oct 1;198(7):1037-43
  5. Morris GA, Ikumapayi UN, Antonio M, Howie SR, Adegbola RA. A novel Campylobacter jejuni sequence type from a culture-negative patient in the Gambia. PLoS ONE. 2008 Mar 12;3(3):e1773

2007

  1. Ikumapayi UN, Antonio M, Sonne-Hansen J, Biney E, Enwere G, Okoko B, Oluwalana C, Vaughan A, Zaman SMA, Greenwood et al.. Molecular epidemiology of community-acquired, invasive, non-typhoidal Salmonella among children aged 2-29 months in ruralGambia and discovery of a new serovar, Salmonella enterica Dingiri. J Med Microbiol. 2007 Nov;56(Pt 11):1479-84.)
  2. Howie SR, Antonio M, Akisanya A, Sambou S, Hakeem I, Secka O, Adegbola RA. Re-emergence of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease in The Gambia following successful elimination with conjugate Hib vaccine. Vaccine. 2007 Aug 21;25(34):6305-9. Epub 2007 Jun 29.
  3. Adetifa IMO, Lugos MD, deJong BC, Antonio M, Adegbola RA, Hill PC. Rising ELISPOT count prior to the onset of symptoms of full-blown tuberculosis disease. Int J Tuberc Lung Dis. 2007 Mar;11(3):350-2

Pre-2006

  1. Kasse Y, Jasseh M, Corrah T, Donkor SA, Antonio M, Jallow A, Adegbola RA, Hill PC. Health seeking behaviour, health system experience and tuberculosis case finding in Gambians with cough. BMC Public Health. 2006 Jun 5; 6:143
  2. Chuan-Peng R, Chaudhuri RR, Fivian A, Bailey CM, Antonio M, Barnes WM, Pallen MJ (2004) The ETT2 Gene Cluster, Encoding a Second Type III Secretion System from Escherichia coli, Is Present in the Majority of Strains but Has Undergone Widespread Mutational Attrition J. Bact., 186(11) 3547-3560
  3. Antonio M, McFerran N and M. Pallen (2002). Mutations affecting the Rossman fold of isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase are correlated with low-level mupirocin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 46(2):438-42
  4. Pallen MJ, Lam AC, Antonio M and Dunbar K (2001). An embarrassment of sortases; Trends in Microbiology. 9 (3) 97-145
  5. Mabruk MJ, Antonio M, Flint SR, Coleman DC, Toner M, Kay E, Leader M, Atkins GJ. (2000). A simple and rapid technique for the detection of Epstein-Barr virus DNA in HIV associated oral hairy leukoplakia biopsies. J Oral Pathol Med. 29(3):118-22
  6. Watson S, M. Antonio & S.J. Foster (1998) Isolation and characterisation of Staphylococcus aureus starvation-induced, stationary-phase mutants defective in survival or recovery. Microbiology 144: 3159-69.
  7. F. Gibson, J. Walsh, P. Mburu, A. Varela, K.A. Brown, M. Antonio, K.W. Belsel, K. P. Steel, S.D.M Brown; (1995) A type VII myosin encoded by the mouse deafness gene shaker-1: Nature 374: 62-64
  8. Antonio M and Pallen M: (1994) Typing hospital isolates of Staphylococcus aureus using PCR-RFLP applied to Staphylocoagulase genes. The Journal of Medical Microbiology, Volume 40 supplement 1 no: 289

Book Chapter

  1. Samba Sow, Martin Antonio, Joe O. Oundo, Inacio Mandomando, and T. Ramamurthy “Endemic and Epidemic Cholera in Africa” in Epidemiological and Molecular aspects on Cholera. Published by the Humana Press USA 2009