BIOSKETCH
Dr Paradise Madlala is a Senior Lecturer and Faculty Member at the HIV Pathogenesis Programme (HPP) in the School of Laboratory Medicine and Medical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). He obtained his PhD in Genetics at UKZN and did postdoctoral training in Molecular Virology at KU Leuven, Belgium. He heads a team of researchers and postgraduate students that focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that govern HIV latency at the transcriptional level. Specifically, his group investigates the role of HIV promoter (LTR), Tat and Nef genetic variation on latency establishment and reversal potential. Furthermore, his group seeks to characterize the latent reservoir size, decay dynamics and associated immunological response differences between women and men living with HIV subtype C. The data generated from this research will inform HIV cure strategies including for subtype C which is responsible for 98% HIV infections in South Africa. He is a recipient of many awards including the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Strategic Health Innovation Partnerships (SHIP), which he used to successfully develop the HIV-1 subtype C based latency model to characterize latency profiles of the non-subtype B viruses. He also holds a BELSPO/NRF award that supports joint networking research activities between South African and Belgian Researchers. Recently, he received VLIR-UOS awards to investigate a functional cure of HIV infection with subtype C strains prevalent in South Africa. In addition, he holds Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence (SANTHE) awards. He has joined the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence (SANTHE) since its inception in 2015 and supervises SANTHE Fellows in collaborative research projects across SANTHE sites. He is Principal Investigator on a study in partnership with Dr Aubin Nanfack from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon, and Dr Guinevere Q. Lee, Cornel University, New York. In this project he aims to study the impact of HIV subtype B, C, and A/G intact-genomes LTR genetic variation on the strength of viral promoter. He is also a Principal Investigator for the SANHE SHARP Fellowship. He is part of the working group for HIV Cure Africa Acceleration Partnership (HCAAP) that is developing a CUREiculum toolkit or booklet in the language of different local communities across the African continent.