The National Institutes for Communicable Diseases (NICD) congratulates Ntando Phaahla, a PhD student working in the NICD’s Centre for HIV and STI, for having won the Best Student Poster in the Infectious Diseases category.
The Faculty Research Day and Postgraduate Expo 2018, from the University of the Witwatersrand, took place on the 6th of September. Whereof the event attracted over 300 postgraduate students and staff members.
Ntando’s research poster presentation, and noting contributions from contributing authors, titled “Circulating levels of HIV-1-specific IgG differentially affect antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxic and phagocytic responses in HIV-1 infected individuals” talks about how immune responses control HIV-1 infection could contribute to developing strategies to treat or prevent HIV-1 infection.
The study, conducted on HIV-1 infected South Africans, looked at the engagement of HIV-specific IgG (antibody) with Fc-gamma receptors expressed on immune cells activates powerful antiviral responses.
