Hugo David Awards
(Previously Paper of the Semester Awards)

The Hugo David Awards are two annual awards for the best papers of the year published by an ESM member. They will be awarded yearly at the annual meeting and the prize is 500 Euros for each of the awardees.

In 2021 the ESM, in collaboration with Hugo David's family, decided to honour this great scientist by creating a new award in his name.

Read more about Hugo David and his work below.

Entry Guidelines

Who is eligible?

First or last author of the publication, must be an active and paid member of the society at the time of the proposal and will be the recipient of the prize.
First or last author can only be awarded one prize a year.
In cases where there are co-first authors, it is sufficient for one of them to be an ESM member.
Researchers must be under 40 (or less than 7 years after PHD)
Submitted papers must have appeared within 6 months of the deadline, defined as the date of online publication

Proposals and selection process

The deadline for submitting publications will be 30 June and 31 December each year and the winner for each semester will be announced within the month following the deadline.
Proposals can be submitted via the online application form at www.esmycobacteriology.eu/hugo-david-award-submission. Please include an abstract as a link or PDF copy.
The ESM Steering Committee will review the entries.

Hugo David Award submission form

Hugo David Award Winners 2024

The mycobacterial glycoside hydrolase LamH enables capsular arabinomannan release and stimulates growth

From left to right: Dr Patrick Moynihan (PI), Kamilla Anochshenko, Dr Samuel Benedict, Amar Gudka, Greg Goudge, Suzanna Benn, Dr Aaron Franklin, and Abigail Layton.

Published in nature communications

Aaron Franklin, Vivian C Salgueiro, Abigail J Layton, Rudi Sullivan, Todd Mize, Lucía Vázquez-Iniesta, Samuel T Benedict, Sudagar S Gurcha, Itxaso Anso, Gurdyal S Besra, Manuel Banzhaf, Andrew L Lovering, Spencer J Williams, Marcelo E Guerin, Nichollas E Scott, Rafael Prados-Rosales, Elisabeth C Lowe, Patrick J Moynihan

Mycobacterial glycolipids are important cell envelope structures that drive host-pathogen interactions. Arguably, the most important are lipoarabinomannan (LAM) and its precursor, lipomannan (LM), which are trafficked from the bacterium to the host via unknown mechanisms.... Read the full paper here >

Hugo David Award Winners 2023

A One Health approach revealed the long-term role of Mycobacterium caprae as the hidden cause of human tuberculosis in a region of Spain, 2003 to 2022

Darío García de Viedma

Published in Eurosurveillance

Miguel Martínez-Lirola , Marta Herranz , Sergio Buenestado Serrano, Cristina Rodríguez-Grande, Eva Dominguez Inarra, Jose Antonio Garrido-Cárdenas , Ana María Correa Ruiz , María Pilar Bermúdez , Manuel Causse del Río , Verónica González Galán , Julia Liró Armenteros , Jose María Viudez Martínez , Silvia Vallejo-Godoy, Ana Belén Esteban García, María Teresa Cabezas Fernández , Patricia Muñoz , Laura Pérez Lago, Darío García de Viedma

Mycobacterium caprae is a member of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) not routinely identified to species level. It lacks specific clinical features of presentation and may therefore not be identified as the causative agent of tuberculosis. Use of whole genome sequencing (WGS) in the investigation of a family microepidemic of tuberculosis in Almería, Spain, unexpectedly identified the involve- ment of M. caprae. Aim: We aimed to evaluate the pres- ence of additional unidentified M. caprae cases and to determine the magnitude of this occurrence.... Read the full paper here >

A Smooth Tubercle Bacillus from Ethiopia Phylogenetically Close to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex

Arash Ghodousi

Daniela Cirillo

Published in Nature Communications

Bazezew Yenew, Arash Ghodousi, Getu Diriba, Ephrem Tesfaye, Andrea Maurizio Cabibbe, Misikir Amare, Shewki Moga, Ayinalem Alemu, Binyam Dagne, Waganeh Sinshaw, Hilina Mollalign, Abyot Meaza, Mengistu Tadesse, Dinka Fikadu Gamtesa, Yeshiwork Abebaw, Getachew Seid, Betselot Zerihun, Melak Getu, Matteo Chiacchiaretta, Cyril Gaudin, Michael Marceau, Xavier Didelot, Getachew Tolera, Saro Abdella, Abebaw Kebede, Muluwork Getahun, Zemedu Mehammed, Philip Supply & Daniela Maria Cirillo

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) includes several human- and animal-adapted pathogens. It is thought to have originated in East Africa from a recombinogenic Mycobacterium canettii-like ancestral pool. Here, we describe the discovery of a clinical tuberculosis strain isolated in Ethiopia that shares archetypal phenotypic and genomic features of M. canettii strains, but represents a phylogenetic branch much closer to the MTBC clade than to the M. canettii strains.... Read the full paper here >

Bedaquiline and clofazimine resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis: an in-vitro and in-silico data analysis

Lindsay Sonnenkalb

Published in The Lancet Microbe

Lindsay Sonnenkalb, Joshua James Carter, Andrea Spitaleric, Zamin Iqbal, Martin Hunt, Kerri Marie Malone, Christian Utpatel, Daniela Maria Cirillo, Camilla Rodrigues, Kayzad Soli Nilgiriwala, Philip William Fowler, Matthias Merker, Stefan Niemann; Comprehensive Resistance Prediction for Tuberculosis: an International Consortium

Bedaquiline is a core drug for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; however, the understanding of resistance mechanisms is poor, which is hampering rapid molecular diagnostics. Some bedaquiline-resistant mutants are also cross-resistant to clofazimine. To decipher bedaquiline and clofazimine resistance determinants, we combined experimental evolution, protein modelling, genome sequencing, and phenotypic data.... Read the full paper here >

Paper of the Semester and Hugo David Winners 2022

Role of Epistasis in Amikacin, Kanamycin, Bedaquiline, and Clofazimine Resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex

Roger Vargas

Ivan Barilar

Maha Farhat

Published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy

Roger Vargas, Jr., Luca Freschi, Andrea Spitaleri, Sabira Tahseen, Ivan Barilar, Stefan Niemann, Paolo Miotto, Daniela Maria Cirillo, Claudio U. Köser, Maha R. Farhat

This study features two notable findings. First, antibiotic resistance to amikacin and kanamycin caused by eis c-14t was lost repeatedly in vivo, presumably owing to the fitness cost in the absence of antibiotic selection, which, to my knowledge, had not been published for MTBC to date. Second and more importantly, Roger made an important contribution to genotypic drug susceptibility testing (gDST). Even though gDST represents the only realistic option for scaling up DST globally, discordant DST results risk undermining the trust of some clinicians in gDST. Specifically, isolates that are found to be genotypically resistant but subsequently test phenotypically susceptible are most problematic. Roger showed that the presence of some mutations can completely counteract the effect of other mutations that would ordinarily confer resistance. Such epistatic interactions have to be considered for individual patient care as well as surveillance, particularly as this phenomenon can be frequent in some settings (e.g. in Lima, Peru, the frequency of bedaquiline and clofazimine resistance would be vastly overestimated if Rv0678 were interpreted without considered the loss-of-function mutations in the associated efflux pump). Indeed, WHO has already announced that analysing the impact of epistasis would be one of the goals of the ongoing work to update to its mutation catalogue for gDST (https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/341981).

Gene evolutionary trajectories in Mycobacterium tuberculosis reveal temporal signs of selection

Álvaro Chiner-Oms

Mariana G. López

Miguel Moreno-Molina

Victoria Furió

Iñaki Comas

Published in PNAS

Álvaro Chiner-Oms, Mariana G. López, Miguel Moreno-Molina, Victoria Furió and Iñaki Comas

Genetic differences between different Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) strains are likely associated with different disease and epidemiological phenotypes. Said differences usually emerge through de novo mutations and are maintained or discarded by a balance of evolutionary forces which includes different types of selection and random population processes. Purifying selection is thought to be weak in MTBC but dominant. Only around 10% of the genes have evidence of genetic drift or positive selection, the latter mainly associated with drug resistance. Using a dataset of ∼5,000 strains representing global MTBC diversity and a methodology that reconstructs the evolutionary trajectory of each gene since the emergence of the MTBC, we have determined the action of past and present selective forces through time, for every single gene.

Almost half of the genes seem to have been under positive selection and/or genetic drift at some point in time, in contrast with previous estimates of 10% or less.
Temporal signals identify genes under positive selection in the past but highly conserved in the present. This includes epitopes that tend to accumulate older mutations, suggesting very early adaptation to host populations.
Temporal signals identify genes that were conserved in the past but under positive selection in the present. Beyond drug-resistant genes, we detected several sensor proteins of two-component systems and toxin-antitoxin systems.
When applied to an enriched drug resistance dataset from high-burden countries our approach correctly identifies changing selection patterns linked to first-line drug use and reveals candidate genes associated with resistance to second-line drugs. We functionally validated one of these genes, Rv1830.

In conclusion, our novel approach allows to incorporate the joint analysis of past and present evolutionary dynamics. Our results reveal hidden signals of the action of evolutionary forces and can be adapted to identify genes involved in different selective pressures.

Paper of the Quarter and Hugo David Winners 2021

Survival of hypoxia-induced dormancy is not a common feature of all strains of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex

Barbara Tizzano

Tobias Dallenga

Christian Utpatel

Published in Scientific Reports

Barbara Tizzano, Tobias K. Dallenga, Christian Utpatel, Jochen Behrends, Susanne Homolka, ThomasA. Kohl & Stefan Niemann

In this publication, Barbara Tizzano, Tobias Dallenga, Christian Utpatel, and colleagues showed that clinical isolates of not every lineage belonging to the M. tuberculosis complex are able to resuscitate from prolonged periods of oxygen starvation. Previous text book knowledge was that reactivation from dormanxy under hypoxic conditions was a common feature of all strains of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. While all clinical isolates from different sub-lineages of lineage 4 (Euro-American) re-gained ability to proliferate, those belonging to lineage 1 (East African-Indian), lineage 2 (Beijing), and lineage 3 (Delhi/ Central Asian) did not reactivate upon exposure to oxygen in terms of growth, metabolism, and transcription. Transcriptome analysis showed a distinc gene expression program for H37Rb (L4) and Beijing (L2) upon oxygen starvation. These findings could provide deeper understanding in infection dynamics and epidemiology of different lineages of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and may help to develop host-directed therapies and drugs that target the dormant state of mycobacteria.

Genomic analyses of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from human lung resections reveal a high frequency of polyclonal infections

Miguel Moreno Molina

Iñaki Comas

Published in Nature Communications

Miguel Moreno-Molina, Natalia Shubladze , Iza Khurtsilava, Zaza Avaliani, Nino Bablishvili, Manuela Torres-Puente, Luis Villamayor, Andrei Gabrielian, Alex Rosenthal, Cristina Vilaplana, Sebastien Gagneux, Russell R. Kempker, Sergo Vashakidze & Iñaki Comas

Polyclonal infections occur when at least two unrelated strains of the same pathogen are detected in an individual. This has been linked to worse clinical outcomes in tuberculosis, as undetected strains with different antibiotic resistance profiles can lead to treatment failure. Here, we examine the amount of polyclonal infections in sputum and surgical resections from patients with tuberculosis in the country of Georgia. For this purpose, we sequence and analyse the genomes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from the samples, acquired through an observational clinical study (NCT02715271). Access to the lung enhanced the detection of multiple strains (40% of surgery cases) as opposed to just using a sputum sample (0–5% in the general population). We show that polyclonal infections often involve genetically distant strains and can be associated with reversion of the patient’s drug susceptibility profile over time. In addition, we find different patterns of genetic diversity within lesions and across patients, including mutational signatures known to be associated with oxidative damage; this suggests that reactive oxygen species may be acting as a selective pressure in the granuloma environment. Our results support the idea that the magnitude of polyclonal infections in high-burden tuberculosis settings is underestimated when only testing sputum samples.

Reconstituting the genus Mycobacterium

Connor Meehan

Sari Cogneau

Leen Rigouts

Published in International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology

Conor J. Meehan, Roman A. Barco, Yong-Hwee E. Loh, Sari Cogneau and Leen Rigouts

The definition of a genus has wide-ranging implications both in terms of binomial species names and also evolutionary relationships. In recent years, the definition of the genus Mycobacterium has been debated due to the proposed split of this genus into five new genera (Mycolicibacterium, Mycolicibacter, Mycolicibacillus, Mycobacteroides and an emended Mycobacterium). Since this group of species contains many important obligate and opportunistic pathogens, it is important that any renaming of species does not cause confusion in clinical treatment as outlined by the nomen periculosum rule (56a) of the Prokaryotic Code. In this study, we evaluated the proposed and original genus boundaries for the mycobacteria, to determine if the split into five genera was warranted. By combining multiple approaches for defining genus boundaries (16S rRNA gene similarity, amino acid identity index, average nucleotide identity, alignment fraction and percentage of conserved proteins) we show that the original genus Mycobacterium is strongly supported over the proposed five-way split. Thus, we propose that the original genus label be reapplied to all species within this group, with the proposed five genera potentially used as sub-genus complex names.

High overall mortality of Mycobacterium genavense infections and impact of antimycobacterial therapy: Systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis

Nils Wetzstein

Thomas A. Wichelhaus

Christoph Stephan

Published in the Journal of Infection

Nils Wetzstein, Johanna Kessel, Tobias M. Bingold, Jonathan Carney, Christiana Graf, Benjamin F. Koch, Florian Meier, Justus Baumgarten, Claus P. Küpper-Tetzel, Yascha Khodamoradi, Timo Wolf, Gundolf Schüttfort, Maria J.G.T. Vehreschild, Thomas A. Wichelhaus, Christoph Stephan

Introduction: Mycobacterium genavense is a fastidious slow growing mycobacterium (SGM) that causes disseminated infections in immunocompromised hosts. It has been described in HIV-positive individuals and increasingly in patients without HIV. The infections are difficult to treat and the optimal antimy-cobacterial regimen is still unknown.
Methods: An individual patient data meta-analysis was conducted aiming at including all hitherto published cases of infection with M. genavense. Clinical manifestations, microbiological data, dispositions and immunosuppression were recorded. Antimycobacterial therapies and mortality were analyzed by logistic regression and time-to-event analysis.

Results: We included 223 patients with infection due to M. genavense published from 1992 to 2021. While the majority was HIV positive (n = 171, 76.7%), 52 patients were non-HIV-patients (23.3%), 36 of whom received immunosuppressive therapy (69%). We could confirm the bacterium's tropism for the gastroin-testinal tract with abdominal pain, hepato-/splenomegaly and abdominal lymphadenopathy being major clinical manifestations. More than 90% of patients received antimycobacterial therapy. The regimens consisted mainly of macrolides, rifamycins and ethambutol. Overall mortality was high, but in logistic regression and time-to-event analysis a macrolide containing regimen was associated with better outcomes.

Conclusion: In this first individual patient data meta-analysis of infections with M. genavense we confirm its tropism for the gastrointestinal tract. The high overall mortality underlines the clinical relevance of infection with this bacterium for the individual patient. In addition, our data give a hint that a macrolide containing regimen is associated with better survival.

Hugo Ayres Lopes David: 1932-2007

Hugo L. David was born in 1932 in Mozambique. He earned in 1958, his MD from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. After earning his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin, USA, in 1969, he joined the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta Georgia, USA. Under his supervision protocols for handling mycobacteria specimens, culture, identification and drug susceptibility were established and adopted by the U.S. Department of Health. His research at the CDC focused the Mycobacterium cell wall which is a formidable barrier to antibiotics, and an obstacle to genetic studies.

In 1975, he joined the Pasteur Institute of Paris as a Professor and the Director of the Tuberculosis and Mycobacteria Department. He established a Mycobacterium reference center for identification and drug susceptibility and developed a large collection of mycobacterium strains. He focused the research activity of his students on the construction of a structural and architectural model of the Mycobacterium cell wall, and on the development of the techniques and the tools necessary for the advancement of research in the fields of Mycobacterium genetics and immunology. Among the milestones achieved for the first time in these fields were the description of the Mycobacterium plasmid profile, the isolation of the Mycobacterium plasmid pAL5000 that is the basis of all Mycobacterium shuttle vectors, the identification of the kanamycin gene as a selection marker for mycobacteria, the construction of the first Mycobacterium shuttle vectors pAL12 and pAL32, the use of electroporation to transfer foreign genes into mycobacteria, the establishment of genetic libraries from Mycobacterium species and the demonstration of the expression of Mycobacterium DNA in heterologous systems. These discoveries constituted the foundation for the development of Mycobacterium molecular genetics and renewed a worldwide interest in this far lugging behind field.

Hugo nurtured the exchange of scientific knowledge through the organization of many international conferences focusing on Mycobacterium research, spending months taking part in the organization of mycobacteriology laboratories in other countries, and being one of the founders of the European Society for Mycobacteriology (ESM).

Hugo was remarkably calm in his interactions with others, and simple in his way of living. He listened to his students, motivated them, and created an atmosphere of academic freedom to foster innovation and excellence. He retired from Pasteur Institute of Paris in 1992, with over 200 publications in the field of mycobacteriology.

Hugo David

Hugo David Awards (Previously Paper of the Semester Awards)