Eugene Dowdle Award PhD Presentations - 2nd session
Today, 16 May 2019, the second round of PhD Presentations took place in the Wofson Pavillion. Three PhD candidates presented on their PhD projects while competing for the Eugene Dowdle Award with winners receiving 1st place R15,000, 2nd place R7,000 and 3rd place R3,500 cash prizes.
Lorna Gcanga opened the session with her talk entitled "IL-4/IL-13-inducible lincRNA-MIR99AHG regulates macrophage polarization and acts as a promoter for intracellular M. tuberculosis growth". Lorna's hypothesis for her project is that M. tuberculosis hijacks lincRNA-MIR99AHG to establish a successful persistence and survival in macrophages.
Emily Tangie presented next on "The Effect of Plasmodium infection on the Immunogenicity and Efficacy of BCG vaccine against M. tuberculosis in Mouse Model". Emily stated in her conclusion that an acute but not cleared malaria infection at the time of BCG vaccination decreases the efficacy of BCG and that efficacy appears to be IFNg-depedent even though cytokine responses doesn't always correlate with protection.
Antoinette Labuschagne was the last to present with her talk entitled "Esablishment of a Humanized BLT-NSG Mouse and its Application in the Evaluation of a DNA HIV-1 Vaccine. Antoinette concluded that human heamato-lymphoid BLT-NSG mice can be successfully established but that the model has limitations and is expensive and labour intensive.
Next PhD Presentation Sessions
12:00 in the Wolfson Pavillion
23 May 2019 Presentations
- Agano Kiravu
- Lerato Hlaka
- Alisha Chetty
- Melissa Murphy
6 June 2019 Presentations
- Muchaneta Mugabe
- Jermaine Khumalo
- Khanyisile Kgoadi
- Cheleka Mpande
Article by Bonamy Holtak