Dr. Irene Grant is a Professor of Microbiology and Food Safety at Queen’s University in Belfast. Her long time research interest has been Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis, its heat resistance, presence in milk and dairy products, and methods for its accurate detection and enumeration. She has published extensively on this subject and is recognized as an international authority on this potentially foodborne and zoonotic bacterium. In this presentation, Dr. Grant reports on some preliminary findings of the Crohn’s/MAP Testing Study funded by Human Para, and describes her phage assay technique used for the detection of MAP.
John Aitken is a free-lance microbiologist based out of Christchurch, New Zealand and the senior director of 
Dr. Robert Greenstein is a researcher in the Laboratory of Molecular Surgical Research at the VA Medical Center in Bronx, NY. He has written numerous publications on the subject of mycobacteria, and has recently turned his efforts toward the anti-MAP activity of existing Crohn’s disease therapies.
Learn about Dr. Greenstein’s decades of work with MAP, conventional Crohn’s disease treatments and antibiotic resistance. His presentation concludes with a discussion of the proof needed to link MAP with Crohn’s, followed by an audience Q&A session.
Dr. Jonathan Budzik is a Visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley Cox Lab and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care at the University of California, San Francisco. His research interests include understanding the changes in host protein phosphorylation during M. tuberculosis infection and investigating the molecular basis for M. avium. complex virulence.
To kick off Human Para’s 2018 conference, Mycobacterial Implications in Crohn’s and Chronic Inflammatory Diseases, Dr. William Chamberlin provided a brief overview of the history of atypical mycobacteria in human disease, suggestions on how to change the status quo by establishing causality and discussed the challenges going forward.