CIDRI-Africa welcomes Dr Georgia Schäfer

CIDRI-Africa welcomed Dr Georgia Schäfer as a Contributing Investigator in mid-2020. Her particular research interest is in the host-pathogen interactions of Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) and human papillomavirus (HPV). Both viruses are associated with AIDS-defining malignancies.

Georgia leads a research group at the ICGEB Cape Town “Virology – Emerging Viruses”  which focuses on oncogenic viruses relevant in the sub-Saharan African context where there is a high HIV burden. Her long-term aims include the development of novel preventative and diagnostic tools through both basic laboratory-based studies as well as clinical studies involving national and international collaborations.

Her group has discovered previously undescribed molecules that modulate early events during HPV infection, such as vimentin¹ and surfactant protein A². The group has also identified genetic variants of the KSHV entry receptor (EPHA2) that were associated with susceptibility to KSHV infection and Kaposi’s sarcoma prevalence in a South African HIV-infected patient cohort³. Additionally, they recently found that elevated KSHV viral load in the blood was associated with mortality in critically ill HIV-infected patients with suspected tuberculosis⁴. Together, these findings provide opportunities for future research targeting viral entry to prevent KSHV or HPV-associated cancers, and for developing novel diagnostics for virus-associated cancers in high HIV burden settings.

In response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, Georgia’s group has supported the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT in setting up a diagnostic pipeline to ramp up national SARS-CoV-2 testing capacity. She has also rapidly developed a research programme focused on elucidating and targeting SARS-CoV-2 entry mechanisms with the aim of developing cost-effective preventative treatments for possible future seasonal coronavirus outbreaks­.

 

References

1. Schäfer G, Graham LM, Lang D, Blumenthal MJ, Bergant Marusic M, Katz AA. Vimentin modulates infectious internalisation of HPV16 pseudovirions. Journal of Virology 2017; 91 (16) e00307-17

2. Ujma S, Carse S, Chetty A, et al. Surfactant Protein A impairs genital HPV16 pseudovirus infection by innate immune cell activation in a murine model. Pathogens 2019; 8(4) 288

3. Blumenthal MJ, Schutz C, Meintjes G, et al. EPHA2 sequence variants are associated with susceptibility to Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infection and Kaposi's sarcoma prevalence in HIV-infected patients. Cancer Epidemiology 2018; 56: 133-9

4. Blumenthal MJ, Schutz C, Barr D, et al. The contribution of KSHV to mortality in hospitalized HIV-infected patients being investigated for tuberculosis in South Africa. The Journal of Infectious Diseases 2019; 220 (5) 841–851