Research Strategy

Africa has by far the greatest genetic diversity of all continents, and consequently wide variation in people’s responses and vulnerability to injuries and insults to the brain. This ranges from timing of onset through to severity of phenotype and finding the genetic drivers of these developmental, psychiatric and cognitive trajectories in Africa may provide answers that can be applied worldwide.

HIV is a highly neurotropic virus and TB, in particular TB meningitis, causes significant neurological disability. With Sub-Saharan Africa being the global epicentre of these infectious diseases, our long-term goal is prevention which requires us to understand their mechanisms, develop screening approaches and devise interventions to reduce their impact.

Trauma, due to road traffic accidents, falls, and assaults, is the leading cause of death and neurological disability in Sub-Saharan Africa, with rates higher than any other region of the world. Understanding the cascade of neurological mechanisms that follow traumatic injury may allow us to prevent further damage (secondary prevention) and improve outcomes.

Sub-Saharan Africa has high foetal exposure to environmental toxins including substances such as alcohol, methamphetamine and nicotine. Understanding how these exposures affect brain development may direct prevention strategies and inform better policies to reduce substance abuse.

Understanding the effects of malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies on brain development across the lifespan is critical in guiding effective intervention strategies. This work is particularly pertinent at present given how the already-high levels of these risks have been exacerbated by COVID-19 lockdowns across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Poverty and unemployment, intensified by the COVID pandemic, have heightened exposure to violence and increased the prevalence of associated psychosocial risks, such as depression, anxiety, injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is vital to explore safe and effective mediations and behaviour strategies, as well as to finding a balance between the imperative to intervene and the need to develop a trusting relationship that will enable affected individuals to share sensitive information about their lives.

Our researchers address fundamental questions by longitudinally mapping brain development and cognitive growth across the lifespan. Mental health, cognitive impairment and psychosocial risk assessment requires screening tools to be designed for resource-poor clinical settings. Our investigators validate and implement traditional neuropsychological and neurocognitive assessments to determine whether existing measures of development and cognition are valid across African settings, and how they can be better adapted. This includes developing low-cost, open-access technology for measuring brain development.

Our neuroscience projects are run in laboratories affiliated with the NI. With access to a host of clinical specimens that are rarely available elsewhere, these laboratories facilitate key areas of research including biomarker discovery, molecular biology and cell culture work, and drug research and discovery. Our basic neuroscience laboratories are equipped with a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies that allow our researchers to interrogate brain slice, and dermal and neuronal cell cultures using various techniques, including: patch-clamp electrophysiology and local field potential recordings in vitro optogenetics fluorescence microscopy including Ca2+ imaging in vivo EEG wireless telemetry organotypic hippocampal slice cultures computational and theoretical modelling

Africa has the highest genetic diversity in the world, with genetic variation affecting vulnerability to brain injury and insult. Identifying the genetic drivers of brain development in Africa may provide answers with worldwide application. We use the latest next-generation sequencing technologies to interrogate DNA and gene expression profiles from cell culture models to clinical biospecimens. These methodologies include the latest genome-wide analysis techniques, including whole genome sequencing, bulk RNA- sequencing, single cell RNA-sequencing, and ATAC-sequencing.

The Cape Universities Body Imaging Centre (CUBIC), situated adjacent to the NI, is a joint initiative between Siemens, Stellenbosch University, the University of Cape Town and the South African Medical Research Council. The core focus of CUBIC is collaborative imaging research, and technical support is provided by the Imaging Science research group based in the NI. CUBIC houses state-of-the-art, large-bore Siemens 3T Skyra MRI and Biograph mCT Flow 64 PET-CT scanners. CUBIC has network facilities, consultation rooms and common working areas, and in the PET-CT suite are injection rooms, a cooling room and a hot lab. Three MR physicists, three MR radiographers, two nuclear medicine radiographers and a nuclear medicine physician provide technical and expert services.