Who we are
Dr Wilber Sabiiti - Founder
Wilber is a Senior Research Fellow in the University of St Andrew's School of Medicine and specialises in infectious disease research.
Wilber has extensive experience working across various universities, coordinating multi-national projects involving the UK and Africa in the fight against tuberculosis including the training of scientists and clinicians across the world in the principles of molecular bacterial load assay (MBLA) and developing the Vitalbacteria kits.
Prof. Stephen Gillespie - Founder
Professor Stephen Gillespie led the research group that first evented the Molecular Bacterial Load Assay (MBLA) at University College London before coming to University of St Andrews in 2010. The development of the now called the tuberculosis Molecular Bacterial Load Assay (TB-MBLA) continued at University of St Andrews under Prof Gillespie’s leadership. In 2017, the trademark Vitalbacteria was formed to market the TB-MBLA kits through SOI Ltd.
Dr Derek Sloan - Founder
Dr Derek Sloan is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician with a joint appointment at the University of St Andrews and NHS Fife. He has extensive experience in the management of infectious diseases, particularly tuberculosis (TB). He has contributed to patient care and TB Control Programmes in Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, England and Scotland. He completed a Wellcome Trust fellowship in Liverpool and Malawi, culminating in the award of a PhD from the University of Liverpool.
His research is targeted towards clinical therapeutics questions of global public health significance. He has ongoing projects on the clinical pharmacology of anti-TB drugs, PK-PD modeling of responses to anti-microbial therapy and programmatic interventions to reduce mortality from infectious diseases in low resource settings. He has ongoing collaborative work in range of global settings including Africa, Eastern Europe and South-East. He is a member of the executive group of the EDCTP-funded Pan African Consortium for the Evaluation of Anti-Tuberculosis Antibiotics (PanACEA) and is part of the international Medical Monitoring Team for the ongoing TB Alliance sponsored SimpliciTB clinical trial.
Dr Sloan also has an interest in the acute management of infectious disease outbreaks. He was Quality Team Lead for the UK Emergency Medical Team (UK-EMT) response to the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in West Africa in 2015, was Clinical Lead for the UK-EMT response to a diphtheria outbreak amongst the displaced Rohingya population on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in 2018, and has undertaken two missions to strengthen Viral Haemorrhagic Fever preparedness in Rwanda.