Share Tweet

During July, the acclaimed researcher, Dr Tulio de Oliveira from the Southern African Treatment Research Network (SATuRN), was invited to CAPRISA to visit CAPRISA's eThekwini Clinical Research Site. He also presented latest developments on affordable HIV and TB drug resistance testing and open access, public, drug resistance databases to CAPRISA's management team, followed by discussions on possible opportunities for collaboration.

Together with its 24 research partners, SATuRN has collated over 7000 resistance genotypes linked to treatment and clinical information in Southern Africa. Its research and development strategy has drastically reduced the cost of drug resistance genotyping and, as part of its capacity building efforts, the network has delivered training in drug resistance testing and management to 1346 physicians and nurses in southern Africa. Later this year it will hold its 7th annual workshop at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

Dr de Oliveira is a senior researcher at the Wellcome Trust-Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies in Mtubatuba, KwaZulu Natal. He is also a director of the (SATuRN) in KwaZulu Natal, which has developed the advanced diagnostic technologies. Using genotyping analysis, SATuRN aims to create cost effective HIV and TB resistance testing, which Dr Oliveira would like to see being widely implemented to patients and providers.

For more information, visit: www.bioafrica.net/saturn

News date: 2012-08-01

Links:

www.caprisa.org/Lists/Newsletters/Attachments/24/August%202012%20Newsletter.pdf

Publication cited

Public Database for HIV Drug Resistance in southern Africa. de Oliveira T, Shafer WR, Seebregts C, for SATuRN, Nature (2010), 464(7289):673.