MRC PhD student

Level of study: PostDoc

Research Question: There are numerous claims on traditional medicines used in the treatment of chronic and life threatening disease conditions, such as tuberculosis. However the current research methods are geared to isolating and identifying a single chemically characterized molecule effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, in most claims traditional medicines used for TB are a combination of different plants and these plants need to be evaluated as a single product.
 
 
Project Summary:  Use of Mycobacterium marinum as a model for development of High throughput (HTS) assays for identifying and screening of compounds and extracts from traditional medicines which would be inhibitors of virulence and the assay to be a test model for Mycobacterium tuberculosis has not been commonly used in pharmacological bioassays. Mycobacterium marinum, causes disease in both human and fish. In humans it causes superficiallesions called swimmers granuloma and in fish it causes tuberculosis-like granulomas on the skin. Mycobacterium marinum is a close relative of mycobacterium tuberculosis as judged by its DNAsequence analysis.

The histopathology of Mycobacterium marinum resembles that of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycobacterium marinum has a generation time of 4 hours ascompared to 20 hours of mycobacterium tuberculosis. Compounds that inhibit Mycobacterium marinum are more likely to have the same effect against mycobacterium tuberculosis. The development of this assay system will speed up the screening process for identification of active extracts and ‘lead molecules’ against the tuberculosis causing bacterium. Once the method is standardized and validated, for using it in a High Throughput Screening (HTS) procedure, thousands of compounds and extracts will be tested in a short period of time. Dr Bapela has also a further interest in using other techniques such as the intramacrophage model for activity, using Mycobacterium marinum strain that has a Green Flourescent Protein plasmid incorporated in it. He will also develop a mouse and fish model for testing compounds and whole extracts that can be developed as drugs for treating tuberculosis.   

Supervisor: Dr MG Matsabisa
Study Support: DST Professional Development Programme (PDP)
MRC Lead Programme: Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)