A/Prof Gasnat Shaboodien is the Director of the Cardiovascular Genetics research laboratory at UCT, and she and her team have been studying the genetic causes of heart muscle disease or cardiomyopathy (ie. ARVC DCM, HCM and RCM) for over a two decades.

This disease is often fatal and is one of the major causes of heart failure and heart transplantation in sub-Saharan Africa. The team have used cutting edge technologies such as next generation sequencing to study the genetic causes of disease in what is arguably the largest cardiomyopathy cohort in Africa. Even though they have made many groundbreaking discoveries in genetics, A/Prof Shaboodien maintains that there are still large knowledge gaps in the understanding of this disease.

In 2018, A/Prof Shaboodien also established the first zebrafish unit at the University of Cape Town with the aim to use the zebrafish to create functional models of cardiomyopathy. Her collaborations with the University of Manchester have resulted in her team being trained in zebrafish husbandry and genetic engineering since 2019.

A/Prof Shaboodien holds a UK Home Office Licence, granted by the Scottish Accreditation Board, that allows her to perform genetic engineering on zebrafish larvae, which is a first for South Africa.