Breakdown of postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the CBTBR in 2007

Degrees conferred and postdoctoral fellowships completed
The CBTBR graduated 5 postdoctoral fellows, 8 PhD, 2 MSc, and 9 Honours students in 2007. The quality of the work produced by CBTBR students is reflected in the number of awards that they have received and by the comments made in reports from external examiners. The fact that many student projects have resulted in peer-reviewed publications affirms the education/ training philosophy of the CBTBR, which places a premium on the quality of training provided.

Dissertations and theses
MSc dissertation:

• Phetole W. Mahasha - “Trafficking of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis PE and PPE proteins”.

PhD theses:

• Teri Roberts – “The characterization of immune responses during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection”.
• Hanne Veenstra – “The Investigation Of Peripheral Blood Cellular Immune Responses During Infection With Mycobacterium Tuberculosis”.
• Elizabeth M. Streicher – “Application of spoligotyping in the understanding of the dynamics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in high incidence communities”,
• Chantal L. Babb – “Identification of candidate genes and testing for association with tuberculosis in humans”.
• Marlo Möller – “Human genetic susceptibility to tuberculosis: The investigation of candidate genes influencing interferon gamma levels and other candidate genes affecting immunological pathways”,
• Hendrik Johannes Nel – “The influence of helminth infection on the host immune response to mycobacteria”,
• Don Hayward – “Functional and genetic study of M.tuberculosis Glutamine Synthetase (GS) and other factors possibly involved in GS metabolism”.
• Rabia Johnson – “Understanding the mechanisms of drug resistance in enhancing rapid molecular detection of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis”.

Research interns (MRC sponsored)

• Dr M Hanekom, (Clinical Intern) Registered for PhD degree (1st year) and in 2nd year of internship during 2007.

Recruitment of new postgraduate students
In keeping with existing practices at both sites, several factors were taken into account in selecting new students, including the academic record, scientific background and referees reports of the applicant, as well as the supervisory capacity available within the CBTBR. On this basis, a number of new students have joined the team already or will do so during the course of 2008. Applications from other students are under consideration, pending availability of supervisory capacity, laboratory and office space and/or funding. At the SU node, we enrolled 3 PhD and 9 Honours students into the CBTBR in 2007. At the Wits node, we have enrolled one new postdoctoral fellow (black female), will be interviewing a second in January 2008 (black male), and have recruited a new PhD student (black female), who will register in June 2008.

Honours and awards to students

• The Scarce Skills Doctoral Bursary of Ms. Betty Mowa was renewed for a third year. She and Prof. Mizrahi were also re-awarded a Mellon Postgraduate Mentoring Programme grant from Wits.
• Ms. B. Mowa was also awarded a Claude Leon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008/9, which she will hold in the Wits node.
• Dr. M .Moller was awarded a Claude Leon Foundation postdoctoral fellowship for 2008/9 in the SU node
• Dr. G. Abrahams was selected as one of five scientists from developing countries who were awarded Travelling Fellowships from the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development to attend the Gordon Research Conference on Tuberculosis Drug Development, held in Oxford in August.
• Ms. V. Goosens) was awarded an MSc bursary from the MRC.
• Dr. T. Roberts attended the Keystone symposium on “Challenges of global vaccine development”,  2007 for which she received a scholarship from the Gates Foundation.
• Ms. C. Harper won the Whitehead Scientific Prize for Best Honours Student in 2007 (SU).
• Hawa J. Golakai was awarded a Keystone Global Travel Award for Postgraduates to attend the       Keystone Symposium on Tuberculosis in Vancouver during March 2007.
• Mr. A. Loxton (PhD student) received Global Health Travel Award to attend a Keystone Symposium, 3-8 March 2007, Sante Fe, USA.

Hosting of international exchange students

• Mr. Henrik Mueller from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin arrived during July 2007 and will spend 1 year at the SU node.

TB training course in Italy
Profs. Paul van Helden and Eileen Hoal were invited to give one and a half hour presentations each as part of a training course held in Naples Italy, on the "Recrudescence of an old disease: Tuberculosis". The course was targeted at post-docs and academic staff. Participants were from a number of European countries and the USA, for example. This was a wonderful opportunity to really discuss in an open manner our work and that of other experts in the field, with the course lecturers as well as the participants. The open and relaxed atmosphere resulted in many heated discussions, which was scientifically very healthy and stimulating. This is an excellent model for informative meetings, where the lecturers and "students" probably learnt equally as much. Some new collaborations are likely to result from this activity. The principal course organiser was Prof. Stefan Kaufmann, from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin.

Molecular Epidemiology Course
Prof. Rob Warren ran Molecular Epidemiology courses for African/Asian/South America fellows from Tanzania (Theckla Selwyn Kazimoto), Mozambique (Adelina Machado, Claudio Laisse and Sofia Viegas), Ethiopia (Desta Arega Anore), Gauteng (Charmaine Mlambo), Brazil (Martha Maria Oliveira), the AIEA (see below) vistors from East Asia, and for postgraduate students at the Honours level from the faculty of Health Sciences. This was a comprehensive course where all participants had hands-on experience for the extraction of DNA from Mycobacteria tuberculosis, restriction enzyme digests, southern blotting, probe labelling and hybridisation. The course equipped all participants with the necessary skill to enable them to perform world class DNA fingerprinting. The participants from Africa and Asia also received a comprehensive manual and components such as standards, probes and internal markers to ensure that they could immediately begin DNA fingerprinting in their respective countries.

Training courses attended by staff and students
Ms. B. Mowa was awarded a CU-SA Fogarty AITRP short-term fellowship for TB basic sciences training in the USA, which she held in the laboratory of Prof. G. Kaplan (Public Health Research Institute, NJ) from August 2006 – February 2007, and was trained in the use of the murine model for assessing the virulence of strains of M. tuberculosis. 

Dr. D. Warner was selected as part of a group of highly promising young researchers, to participate in the Wits University’s Research Bootcamp 2007. Dr. Warner attended training courses in Research Writing, Voice and Presentation Skills, and Time and Stress Management, as well as a Writing Retreat.
Prof. Hoal, Dr. M. Moller and Ms. E. Truter from the SU node attended a 4-day course at UCT on Design and Analysis of Genetic-based Association studies by Jonathan Marchini and Chris Spencer.

Techniques training at the Salvador Zubirán National Nutrition Institute, Mexico City, Mexico
A collaboration between Profs. Paul van Helden, Rob Warren and Tommie Victor of the CBTBR and Dr. Rogelio Hernández Pando of the Salvador Zubirán National Nutrition Institute (INNSZ) in Mexico City, Mexico, has been established. The INNSZ has an excellent research facility for studying tuberculosis infections in a murine model and the research group led by Dr. Hernández Pando has published numerous articles on the subject. The CBTBR and INNSZ are collaborating under the umbrella of the TB in the 21st Century Research Group to determine the virulence of Beijing strains found in the Cape Town area. The INNSZ are also experts in in situ techniques to detect mycobacteria, including in situ PCR and in situ hybridisation. A PhD student from the CBTBR, Kim Hoek, visited the INNSZ for 5 weeks in February to learn these in situ techniques from Drs Diana Aguilar and Héctor Orozco under the guidance of Dr Hernández Pando. These techniques will now be used to study host pathogen interactions in mycobacterial infections. Because of the success of this collaboration, these techniques have been established in the CBTBR and the knowledge can now be passed on to other researchers in South Africa.

Staff members studying for higher degrees (all registered at SU)

• Gian van der Spuy (MRC) is a 4th year PhD student, working on the analysis and application of evolutionary markers in the epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
• Cedric Werely (PGWC) is a 4th year PhD student, working on Arylamine N-acetyltransferase genes in Tuberculosis to study the influence of host genetics on disease susceptibility

Other capacity development activities
The Departmental allocation from Prof. Mizrahi’s HHMI grant was used to provide MSc bursaries to two black students (Ms. N. Ndlovu and Mr. M. Thwala) and Honours bursaries to two female students (Ms. Vanessa Naidoo and Ms. Kristie Bloom) in the Department of Haematology and Molecular Medicine at Wits University and to support the running costs of their research projects.

International visitors to the CBTBR
The Wits node hosted Prof. Gilla Kaplan from the PHRI in New Jersey on 26-27 June, 2007, and again on 1-2 November, 2007. Prof. Kaplan is a long-standing collaborator of the Prof. Mizrahi and Dr. Kana and has also hosted three researchers from the MMRU in her laboratory as CU-SA Fogarty AITRP trainees over the past few years (Dr. Dawes, Dr. Kana and Ms. Mowa). In addition to reviewing progress on the various collaborative projects that have grown out of the training fellowships, Prof. Kaplan was able to meet other TB researchers at the NICD, which has led to the development of new collaborative research projects between Prof. Kaplan and local scientists.

In August 2007, Dr. B. Kana visited the laboratory of Dr. G. Mukamolova, at the University of Leicester, UK, to further develop our new research collaboration on the Rpf proteins of M. tuberculosis.

Dr. David Sherman from the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI) visited the Wits node from 26-30 October 2007. Dr. Sherman is PI of the “Integrated Methods for Tuberulosis Drug Discovery (IM TB)” project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and in which the MMRU is a consortium member. The purpose of Dr. Sherman’s visit was to meet the MMRU researchers participating in the IM TB Project (Dr. G. Abrahams and Ms. S. Savvi) and to discuss the various projects that are being carried out in close collaboration with his laboratory.

The SU node has for the past 9 years been involved in development and transfer of molecular technology to various countries in Africa through funding mostly from the IAEA. In this initiative we use tuberculosis as a model disease to transfer molecular technology. Our involvement includes planning and report meetings with IAEA (Prof. T. Victor), the running of training workshops in Africa and the hosting of African Fellows for training purposes. The application of the molecular techniques and description of markers will allow us to monitor the spread of existing and appearance of new drug resistant strains in the region. In 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) awarded seven candidates (Dr. N.T. Nyambo from Tanzania, Dr. M. Akriem from Morocco, Andriansjah Rukmana from Indonesia, Concepcion Ang from Philippines, Lien Pham Thi Kim from Vietnam, Chia Sui Ong from Malaysia, and Dr. Ushani Sadeepika Rajapaksa from Sri Lanka) a two-month fellowship to be trained in theory and practical techniques in molecular diagnostic methods of communicable diseases. The emphasis was on the application of these techniques for the detection of mutations in genes associated with drug resistance in TB.