Associate Professor J. Claire Hoving
Associate Professor J. Claire Hoving PhD (UCT)
Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow in Public Health and Tropical Medicine; Group leader in the AFRICA CMM Medical Mycology Unit, affiliated to the MRC UK Centre for Medical Mycology; honorary senior research fellow at the University of Exeter; contributing investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in Africa (CIDRI-Africa). Based in the Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology; Member, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town (UCT).
Claire Hoving is a basic immunologist whose research aims to understand host immune responses to disease with a particular focus on HIV-related opportunistic infections. Fungal infections are often an overlooked clinical and public health issue but cause significant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite their high prevalence, there are very few researchers dissecting the mechanisms of fungal infection in Africa, yet research in this field will provide new insights into protective immunity and may lead to improved treatments for immunocompromised patients. Claire’s group currently investigates the pathogenesis and host immune responses to:
1) Pneumocystis jirovecii, a common cause of pneumonia and death in patients with advanced HIV disease.
2) Emergomycosis africanus, a newly identified fungal pathogen in HIV patients and currently the most commonly diagnosed dimorphic fungal pathogen in these patients in South Africa.
3) Co-infection between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and opportunistic fungal pathogens.
Selected publications:
See publications and profile on Research Gate.
Room S3.06.1 Wernher & Beit South
Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine
Faculty of Health Sciences
University of Cape Town
Observatory 7925
South Africa
Email: Jennifer.hoving@uct.ac.za
Group members:
| Member | Position |
| Emily Higgitt | MSc student |
| Patricia Otieno | PhD Student |
| Maxine Hoft | PhD Student |
| Tshepiso Mbangiwa | PhD Student |
| Dr Sumayah Salie | Postdoc |
| Dr Lucian Duvenage | Postdoc |
Other research entities:
AFRICA CMM Medical Mycology Unit tackling fungal infections (partnership between Gordon Brown, University of Exeter, and UCT including
Claire Hoving
Collaborations:
Prof Gordon Brown, Director, MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter, UK
Prof Jay Kolls, Professor of Medicine & Paediatrics, Tulane University, School of Medicine, USA
Prof Mark Nicol, Professor in Microbiology, University of Western Australia
Prof Heather Zar, Red Cross Children’s Hospital, UCT, SA
Prof Andrew Limper, Mayo, USA
Prof Nelesh Govender, NICD, SA
Prof Chad Rappleye, Ohio State University
Assoc/Prof Ilan Schwartz, University of Alberta, Canada
Prof Alf Both, Stellenbosch University, SA
Prof Anita Sil, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Dr Alexandre Alanio, Institute Pasteur, France
Dr Georgia Schäffer, ICGEB
Prof Frank Brombacher, Cytokines and disease group, UCT
Prof Alistair Brown, MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter, UK
Dr Olga Nev, MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter, UK