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Celebrating 100 Years of Health Sciences
The major focus of the UCT node of the DST/NRF Centre of
Excellence for Biomedical TB Research (CBTBR), which was
established in 2011, is on strengthening the node’s research
thrusts in fundamental research in the physiology andmetabolism
of
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
of relevance to drug discovery
and drug resistance. The node is engaged in three inter-related
drug-discovery projects. Two of these form part of large
international TB drug consortia funded by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and the European Union Seventh Framework
Programme respectively. The third project is being carried out
under the auspices of the South African Tuberculosis Research and
Innovation Initiative, funded by the Technology and Innovation
Agency. This project has formed the basis of a new university-
wide collaborative partnership with Professor Kelly Chibale’s
group in the H3-D Centre for Drug Discovery.
F
urther efforts in 2012 have focused on identifying opportunities for new
collaboration with other TB research groups in the IIDMM, including the
Desmond Tutu HIV Centre, the Clinical Infectious Diseases Research Initiative and
the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, in studies that can capitalise on
the CBTBR’s expertise in mycobacterial genetics, genomics, biochemistry and
physiology. Encouraging progress has been made in this area, with several new
projects under discussion.
A major research output in 2012 was a publication in
Chemistry & Biology
by Dr Garth
Abrahams, Professor Valerie Mizrahi and international collaborators at the US National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Seattle BioMed and Cambridge University
describing the development and application of engineered strains of
Mycobacterium
tuberculosis
as novel tools for TB drug discovery. In another important development,
Dr Krishmoorthy Gopinath and Dr Digby Warner succeeded in identifying the protein
responsible for uptake of vitamin B12 by
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
. This work,
which was carried out in collaboration with colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology in Lausanne with funding from the Swiss-South Africa Joint Research
programme, was presented at two international conferences in France, and has been
submitted for publication.
Professor Mizrahi was selected as a Senior International Research Scholar of the HowardHughes
Medical Institute (HHMI) in 2012. Her five-year grant from the HHMI will support programmes in
fundamental TB research and advanced postgraduate training at the UCT node.
Biomedical
TB Research