Dr. Kimberlee Musser, Deputy Director of the Wadsworth Center’s Division of Infectious Diseases, was invited to participate in a World Health Organization technical consultation on tuberculosis diagnostics in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 2026. The consultation brought together global experts in tuberculosis diagnostics to exchange knowledge and inform discussions on testing approaches. Dr. Musser delivered a presentation and contributed her expertise to the meeting.
At the Wadsworth Center, Dr. Musser oversees bacterial and mycobacterial testing and leads the scientific development and implementation of new tests. Her laboratories have developed clinical next-generation sequencing assays – the first of their kind in the United States and among the first in the world – that have transformed testing for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
For Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, testing at the Wadsworth Center includes organism identification and characterization, as well as rapid prediction of drug resistance directly from clinical respiratory specimens, using the methods pioneered by Dr. Musser and the Mycobacteriology team.