Page 104 - SAMRC Annual Report 2024-2025

The OATB has enlisted two PhD students in the better than a 1:2 ratio leveraging of US funds. This
unit’s flagship clinical trial – the COVID vaccine is the largest TB consortium globally and allows for
immunogenicity study. The first is studying extensive multi-county collaboration. Should NIH
the cellular and humoral responses to COVID funding be under threat, this would be devastating
vaccinations in HIV-infected individuals and healthy for our unit as it is our largest grant. At immediate
controls. The second is looking at transcriptomics risk is US$2,5 million for the South African research
in the COVIS enrolled cohort. These are both partners.
students in the University of Pretoria’s Immunology
Department. A third PhD student is researching the The OATB is very involved with the SA TB Think Tank
humoral immunity in the COVIS cohort. providing funding, technical assistance and being part
of the EXCO. The TB Think Tank has been hard hit by
We have also assisted several organisations in their the funding cuts and the OATB has been requested
development of Social Impact Bonds to expand to find ways to support them financially. In the event
the ecosystem of innovative financing strategies in that the Global Fund is affected by the US funding
South Africa and Africa. cuts, the OATB is at risk of losing approximately
R125 million in grant funding from this source
In the OATB Antimicrobial Resistance Project (R14 million for the completion of the Imagine SIB,
looking at the development of new drug targets in R37 million for health financing, R20 million for the
high-priority pathogens, funded from a BRICS grant, MDR TB SIB and R54 million for the scale-up of the
the OATB is supporting two master's students and Imagine SIB). The OATB Director is heavily engaged,
one post-doctoral researcher. through his role as the co-chair of the TB Think Tank
and as former CEO of the South African National
Navigating the Impact of US AIDS Council to better understand the impact of the
Executive Orders on Funding funding cuts and find ways to mitigate this impact.

Our unit has a partnership with NIH through Regional
Prospective Observational Research in Tuberculosis Research Translation
(RePORT) International. RePORT South Africa has Through Arts and Science
been part of this collaboration since its inception Our Learning and Action Network, Invest4Health,
and it is now in its third three-year cycle, i.e. RePORT continues to expand and through this we have
SA III. Through this collaboration, the SAMRC funds solidified partnerships with UCT Bertha Centre,
ZAR 20,999,962 and the NIH USD 2,999,996 over a Oxford University Government Outcomes Lab
three-year period for vital TB research in SA. This is and Genesis Analytics. Invitations to our webinars
are distributed widely to different organisations
and countries and we attract global participation.
Additionally, we share knowledge on professional
social media platforms such as LinkedIn. We have
gone paperless with our marketing material and
now just have one glass display medium with a QR
code that can be scanned which takes you directly
to our I4H platform and allows you to connect to
our network.

StemMentHer learners extracting DNA from
split peas.

102 SAMRC ANNUAL REPOR T 2024-25