Developing an in vivo infectious disease training program at the University of Cape Town - PROJECT SUMMARY
This application seeks to plan and develop a research training program at the University of Cape town (UCT)
that will focus on understanding basic mechanisms underlying bacterial disease in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Bacterial infectious diseases (excluding mTB) are a huge public health problem in SSA as infections caused
by bacterial pathogens, such as Salmonella enterica and Streptococcus pneumonia, are major causes of
mortality. The impact of these pathogens is compounded by widespread antimicrobial resistance (AMR),
vaccines against these pathogens developed outside of SSA being less effective at preventing serious illness
and increasing pathogen virulence. Combined these limit treatment options of these recognized pathogens
and promote emergence of new bacterial causes of mortality (e.g. Klebsiella pneumonia). While
microbiological and clinical research groups in South Africa contribute significantly to global understanding
of these diseases, these groups do not significantly complement this work with complementary mechanistic
in vivo studies. Thus, an urgent need exists to develop advanced regional training in undertaking such in vivo
research into bacterial pathogenesis and host immunity. The objective of our proposed training program is to
fill this gap by leveraging existing strengths and unique resources both at UCT and at our overseas partners
at the University of California Davis (UCD) to develop a research training program. UCT is home to a world
class animal facility that is underutilized by researchers studying non-mTB bacterial infections. UCD has
unique resources that support animal modelling including the #1 ranked Veterinary School globally, the
California National Primate Research Center, the internationally renowned Mouse Biology Program, and a
T32 supported predoctoral program focussed on Animal models of Infectious Diseases. Thus unique
expertise exists at UCD that will be invaluable in supporting the UCT program. We propose a 2-year planning
process that will develop an advanced training platform in in vivo studies of non-mTB bacterial infection in
SSA which we will submit as a competitive proposal for a D43 Global Infectious Disease Research Training
program. Project leaders at UCT and UCD have already identified existing overlapping research strengths
that will benefit from in vivo disease modelling at UCT. D71 supported symposia and researcher exchanges
between UCT and UCD will support the key interactions enabling realization of a competitive and deliverable
D43 program. The planning of this program will also require implementation of ethically approved SOPs,
acquisition of permits to allow transfer of state-of-the-art research reagents to UCT, as well as development
of a new research training program for junior investigators and fellows. The final submission of a competitive
D43 program grant will present a program that will enable high impact mechanistic bacterial infection biology
studies at UCT. The research that emanates from this will accelerate regional and global control of
devastating human bacterial infectious diseases.
