CAPRISA duo graduate with PhDs
We congratulate CAPRISA’s Dr Anushka Naidoo and Dr Gugulethu Mzobe who graduated with PhDs at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Spring Graduation ceremony.
Dr Anushka Naidoo, Senior Research Pharmacist at CAPRISA, was awarded a PhD in Pharmacology at UKZN’s Spring graduation. Her study, entitled: “Moxifloxacin, Pharmacokinetics (PK-PD) in the treatment of drug susceptible Tuberculo-sis”, investigated if a clinically significant drug interaction that may affect drug expo-sure, exists between moxifloxacin and tuber-culosis drug rifampicin or antiretroviral drugs in TB-HIV coinfected patients enrolled in a clinical trial at CAPRISA. She also studied the effects of pharmacogenetic variation in genes coding of drug metabolising and drug transporter enzymes on moxifloxacin con-centrations in African patients.
Dr Gugulethu Mzobe, a postdoctoral Research Fellow at CAPRISA, was awarded a PhD in Medical Microbiology. Her thesis examined temporal gene expression of Chla-mydia trachomatis in keratinocytes at 37°C.Her study confirms that mid-and-late cy-cle chlamydial gene expression levels aredifferent to the published research conduct-ed in HeLa cells at 37°C and that tempera-ture has an effect on the level of Chlamydialgene expression when grown in keratino-cytes. Her study also showed that two hourspost infection, chlamydia retains its elemen-tary body (EB)structural conformation inkeratinocytes at 37°C, and that L2 referencestrain 434 is different from the clinical L2US151 as indicated by the difference in thegene expression pattern.