Dr Rachael Dangarembizi joins CIDRI-Africa as a Contributing Investigator
Rachael joined the CIDRI-Africa team of Contributing Investigators in the first quarter of 2025. She is a Neuroinfections Researcher in the Division of Physiological Sciences, Department of Human Biology, in UCT’s Faculty of Health Sciences, where she leads a twelve-member research group that focusses on the mechanisms of brain injury during fungal infections. The team’s specific interest is the pathophysiology of cryptococcal meningitis: a neglected but highly fatal fungal infection of the brain that is extremely difficult to treat and is a leading cause of mortality in people living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Rachael’s training and expertise are in neuroimmunology and neuroinfections; she has successfully leveraged the skills obtained from her doctoral and postdoctoral training to set up novel translational models and techniques for studying neuroinfectious diseases. She has also set up in vivo and ex vivo rodent models, human brain-based culture systems, immortalized cell culture systems, and post-mortem tissue for studying cellular and molecular mechanisms of cryptococcal infections.
Her aim as a fundamental scientist is to provide the missing layer of basic, mechanistic data that can inform ongoing efforts to develop more effective therapies. Her work over the last 8 years has provided insights into mechanisms of immune-to-brain interactions with fungi and how inflammation or brain injury occurs in response to fungal invasion.
She has been awarded prestigious international grants including the Royal Society’s Future Leaders – African Independent Research (FLAIR) Fellowship (2021) and more recently the UKRI African Research Leaders award (2023). She holds an honorary appointment at the UK MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, and collaborates with the African Microscopy Initiative in Cape Town, the Institute of Infectious Diseases in Uganda, Janelia Research Campus in the USA, and the Institute of Science and Technology (ISTA) in Austria.
Rachael strongly believes that Africa has the necessary knowledge, skills and leadership required to tackle and create solutions to the challenge of neuroinfectious diseases. She established the first neuroinflammation laboratory in Africa that can train African students and give them access to cutting edge techniques such as single nucleus RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, patch-clamping and bioimaging without the need to travel abroad for access.
Rachael holds a BSc from the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe, and an MSc (Med) and PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand.