Research Area
Virology – genotype to phenotype
Current pandemic planning risks being dangerously reactive, owing to how little is known about viruses in African bats and their potential to infect humans. This project aims to identify high-risk viruses in African bats before they spread to humans. This EPSILON will collect bat samples from East, West, and Southern Africa and then take “snapshots” of their viruses with cutting edge laboratory techniques.
Using computational analysis, the programme will predict how similar these bat viruses are to other viruses that are known to infect humans or domestic animals. Viruses with similarity will be flagged as high-risk and subjected to controlled laboratory experiments to confirm or reject these predictions. Once a virus has been identified with a high probability of infecting humans, prototype vaccine components ("immunogens") will be designed which could be rapidly deployed in an outbreak. Rather than reacting to novel outbreaks, this framework for proactive defence will prevent them from becoming pandemics. By combining virus hunting, risk analysis, and vaccine preparation, this EPSILON will create an early-warning system for African bat viruses with pandemic potential.
Dr Jinal Bhiman is a virologist-immunologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and Wits University, South Africa and is co-lead of the Global Immunology and Immune Sequencing for Epidemic Response South Africa (GIISER-SA). By delineating the intersection between viruses and the host immune response, she has informed vaccine design, monoclonal antibody isolation, diagnostics and surveillance for viruses like HIV, influenza, RSV, and SARS-CoV-2.
She led the development of diagnostics that were crucial to South Africa’s COVID-19 pandemic response and co-founded of the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) that discovered the Beta and Omicron variants.
Dr Bhiman is renowned for advancing global health through viral genomic surveillance and antibody research, and her work bridges viral evolution, immunity, and One Health. She is committed to translating research into actionable public health solutions and is a key figure in combating infectious diseases globally and preparing for future pandemics.