A major funding injection of £4.5m from the Wellcome Trust will boost a collaborative effort between South African and British scientists to fast track the understanding of fungal diseases – which claim about 2.5m lives a year – with University of Cape Town researchers having a leading role in the project.
The funding will support the global Mycology Bioimaging Initiative (MBI), which aims to develop cutting-edge tools allowing scientists to visualise how dangerous fungal pathogens grow, spread and cause disease.
UCT researchers, based in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) and the Neuroscience Institute (NI), will work alongside partners at the University of Exeter in England, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Advancing research where the burden is highest
Fungal infections disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries, including South Africa, where HIV/Aids and other conditions increase vulnerability to life-threatening infections, said Professor Claire Hoving, based in the Centre for Medical Mycology (CMM) AFRICA Unit at the IDM.
“Leveraging advanced imaging technologies while being supported by locally embedded yet globally connected systems helps ensure expertise, diagnostic capacity and tools remain within the regions most impacted by disease,” she added.
This would also reduce delays in diagnosis, guide more effective treatment strategies, and ultimately improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations.
The initiative plans to build a sustainable, connected network of scientists equipped to tackle fungal diseases long into the future through training and collaboration.
Understanding emerging and deadly pathogens
IDM researchers will focus on fungal pathogens of growing global concern, including Emergomyces, which was first identified in South Africa in 2013 and is now recognised as causing widespread infection.
In parallel, Professor Rachael Dangarembizi and her team in the NI will investigate how the fungal infection Cryptococcus neoformans affects the brain, particularly in people with HIV.
“Using advanced light-sheet imaging, our team will develop novel tools to visualise Cryptococcus in intact brains, giving us an unprecedented view of how the infection spreads and disrupts the brain in this fatal disease,” said Dangarembizi.
New tools to see the unseen
A major barrier in fungal research has been the lack of tools to observe these microscopic organisms in real time.
Through the MBI, researchers will develop advanced imaging technologies to track fungal growth, fluorescent markers to study infection at the cellular level, and computational tools to analyse the complex biological datasets.
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