Assoc Prof Gasnat Shaboodien

CHI research group: Cardiovascular Genetics (CVG) (Lead)
CHI membership: Full member

Professor Gasnat Shaboodien is the Director of the Cardiovascular Genetics laboratory and has also been the group leader since 2013. She is a trained molecular geneticist with her main areas of in interest being the genetics of inherited cardiac diseases and other rare disorders. Her research aims to discover the genetic causes of inherited heart diseases that cause sudden death or that require heart transplants. This has involved the study of rare families with monogenic disease and the delineation of the genetic architecture of complex traits associated with sudden death (such as cardiac hypertrophy). 
 
In 2009 her team reported the first multicenter study on the clinical characteristics, survival experience, and profile of PKP2 gene mutations in patients with ARVC (heart disease) from the African continent. In 2013 they found a new gene (FAM111B) as the cause of a newly reported disease called hereditary fibrosing poikiloderma and then in 2017, they made headline news when they discovered a new gene (CDH2) as the cause of sudden cardiac death in ARVC. Professor Shaboodien and her team have also established the first zebrafish unit at the University of Cape Town (UCT), thereby introducing the zebrafish as a new disease model at UCT.

Research engagements:

• Cardiomyopathies (MAIN)
• Neuromuscular disease
• Alzheimer's disease