Natasha Pillay
Lab Supervisor Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU), South Africa Email: pillayn@phru.co.za
VALIDATE Role: Network Affiliate
Research Keywords: TB, animal models, clinical trials, Host-directed therapy (HDT)
Biography: Two important contributors to the global morbidity of TB relate to the extended duration of treatment required to achieve a durable cure and the excessive lung damage caused by TB pathogenesis in humans. Hostdirected therapies are being considered to address these two limitations as is their potential combination with anti-TB drugs promises to shorten the duration of therapy, together with reducing inflammation and lung injury. To date, many host-directed therapies have been extensively studied in animal models with clinical trials only recently being conducted. Therefore, my interests are to further investigate the effects of two potential host-directed therapies, aspirin and ibuprofen, for their ability to synergize with TB drugs. Moreover, by looking at a human cell line model in the form of THP-1 macrophage cells to study the potency of aspirin/ibuprofen combinations with anti-TB drugs. My interests also extend to the use of clinical samples that have been collected in a prospective cohort aimed at assessing the effect of combining TB drugs with ibuprofen.
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