Dr Evelyn Lumngwena

CHI research group: Cardiac Imaging & Inflammation Research Group 

Dr Lumngwena joined the Cape Heart Institutes as a post-doctoral research fellow on a project focused on understanding the pathogenesis of Rheumatic valvular heart disease (RHD) in a South African cohort in Cape Town. Her interests are understanding the basic mechanisms of the progression of RHD. She is studying differential protein expression in heart tissues and in the blood of RHD patients to understand changes due to RHD. She is also interested in profiling autoimmune proteins in heart valve tissues and blood of RHD to understand epitopes that drive RHD progression. Moreover, she seeks to identify and differentiate autoimmune proteins shuttled by blood vesicles to drive the progression of RHD.
 
Research engagements:

• Translational cardiovascular research
• Proteomics/ Protein analyses
• Mass spectrometry/Basic bio-informatics visualization
• Extracellular vesicles in disease pathogenesis