ROYAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH AFRICA - Lecture Series 2016

Prof. Theresa Coetzer will present a lecture entitled:

"Trials and Tribulations of Trypanosomiasis: Developing a

Dipstick Diagnostic test"

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Time: 5.45 pm

Venue: John Bews Lecture Theatre,

Life Sciences Campus, Carbis Road, Pietermaritzburg

Animal African Trypanosomiasis (AAT) or nagana is a parasitic disease of livestock that is spread by tsetse flies in sub-Saharan Africa as far south as KwaZulu-Natal. Cattle become anaemic and emaciated and die if not treated. Because the parasites continuously change their surface glycoprotein coats, there is little hope for a vaccine. Drug resistance is on the increase because the two available drugs have been in use for 50 years. There is a critical need for an affordable and practical point of care diagnostic assay for use in rural Africa so that treatment at the herd level could be limited to definite trypanosomiasis cases. Current diagnoses are non-specific (clinical symptoms are similar to those of other parasitic diseases that require different drugs), expensive (molecular biology) or labour intensive (microscopy).

Although it is generally agreed that the first prize would be an antigen-detection test since it would differentiate between active infections and host response to trypanosomes remaining long after cure, antibody-detection assays seem to be easier to develop. We proposed the trypanosomal proteases that we have been studying for a long time as possible diagnostic targets.  These proteases are released into the host bloodstream by dying trypanosomes and could therefore be detected directly (antigen-detection test) or they could induce the production of antibodies by the infected host (antibody-detection test). I will share our journey from identifying protease diagnostic targets to testing them against infected cattle sera to adapting the tests to a dipstick format for use in the field.

Professor Theresa Coetzer is a Biochemist in the School of Life sciences on the local campus of UKZN. She has been working on proteolytic enzymes of trypanosome parasites as drug, diagnostic and vaccine targets for the past 20 years.  She currently holds a Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation South African Research Chair Initiative (DST-NRF SARChI) Chair in Proteolysis in Homeostasis, Health and Disease.

All welcome, please support!  Light refreshments will be supplied.

Enquiries:  Prof. Mike Perrin, Tel. 033 – 260 5118 / 5435.