Dr Melinda Suchard

Country: South Africa

Institution: National Institute for Communicable Diseases and University of the Witwatersrand

Research Areas: Immune Tolerance in HIV, TB and vaccine preventable diseases

Lab Website: www.nicd.ac.za

The centre for Vaccines and Immunology at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases conducts surveillance for vaccine preventable diseases including measles, rubella, polio, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and enteroviruses. Research work focuses on immune tolerance in infectious diseases, particularly Tuberculosis and HIV. An ongoing project is the role of the enzyme indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase as a host biomarker for Tuberculosis.

Facilities include cell culture, ELISA, flow cytometery (LSRFortessa 18 colour instrument, BD Biosciences), 2 Luminex bead based flow cytometers, RT-PCR (ABI 7500 instruments), Sanger sequencing (Life Technologies 3130XL) and a biosafety level 3 laboratory. The institute has a core facility which supports whole genome sequencing.