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Bavesh is currently a senior research scientist at Wits and is
involved in conducting semi-independent research on identification and
validation of novel drug targets for tuberculosis.
He completed his PhD degree and postdoctoral fellowship at the
MRC/NHLS/Wits Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit-DST/NRF Centre
of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research. He has been the recipient of
a Columbia University - Southern African Fogarty AIDS Training and
Research Program fellowship, twice, for postdoctoral training in 2004/5
at the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) in New Jersey and has
also undertaken several short-term working visits to collaborating labs
at the University of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania), Texas A&M
University (Texas) and Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts) in the
USA.
Bavesh has also worked at CSIR during his doctoral studies. He
has recently received the prestigious MRC Career Development Award and
currently holds grants from the MRC, Wits and NHLS.
A major thrust of his current research is the study of the
relationship between the occurrence of clinically latent tuberculosis
infection and the microbiological phenomenon of bacterial dormancy
which is usually characterized by impaired culturability.
Bavesh has been involved in studying the five Rpf homologues
in M. tuberculosis and their roles in peptidoglycan
remodelling, growth, pathogenesis and recrudescence during infection
with the hypothesis that Rpf may provide a novel way of modulating
bacterial growth during infection and as such these factors represent
an interesting unexplored area of anti-tubercular drug discovery.
He is also involved in the study of specialized DNA
polymerases in M. tuberculosis and their role in
genome plasticity and mutation which is pivotal to the evolution of
drug resistance. His other active area of interest is the study of the
mycobacterial electron transport chain, specifically the role of
hypoxic and anaerobic respiratory complexes in energy metabolism under
stressful conditions and during non-replicating persistence. The
modular electron transport chain allows for bacterial growth and
adaptation under varying environmental conditions and thus represents a
potential point of metabolic vulnerability in M. tuberculosis
as evidenced by the recent development of inhibitors that target
several steps in this pathway.
Dr Bavesh
Kana,
Tel: +27 11 489 9030
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