Biography

Maria Tarcela Gler is an adult infectious disease specialist at Makati Medical Center, where she have been in clinical practice since 2005 and currently serve as Chief of the Section of Infectious Diseases. Her work has focused on the treatment and research of tuberculosis (TB) and multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), and over the past decade has expanded to include HIV care as the epidemic has grown in the Philippines.

She has maintained long-standing collaborations with investigators from Emory University and the Georgia TB Research Advancement Center (Georgia TRAC), contributing to observational cohort studies, clinical trials, and investigator mentorship aimed at improving MDR-TB outcomes. Since 2017, she has served as the Clinical Research Site Leader for the De La Salle University clinical research site within the Advancing Clinical therapeutics Globally (ACTG)-Emory–CDC Clinical Trials Unit, overseeing studies on MDR-TB preventive therapy, treatment-shortening regimens, and hepatitis B re-vaccination among people living with HIV. In 2023, she has co-founded the TB-HIV Innovations and Clinical Research Foundation, a non-profit research organization established to continue the activities of the ACTG clinical research site activities and to strengthen locally led TB and HIV research and clinical trial capacity in the Philippines.