RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS

1. Data governance and the POPI Act

Collaborating Parties:
ASSAf

Nature and purpose:
To investigate the impact of local and international regulation on the sharing of biomedical research data in Africa. Drafting committee member for the POPIA code of conduct for research.

Output in the last 12 months:
Code of conduct submitted to the Information Regulator. A framework is in the process of being developed.

Future Direction: Ongoing engagement and amendments to the framework.

2. Venom bioinformatics

Professor Bryan Maritz – UWC
Dr Ciara Staunton – EURAC
Dr Carmen Swanepoel – University of Stellenbosch
Dr Ruben Cloete – SANBI, UWC

Nature and purpose: Investigating the therapeutic potential of venoms through bioinformatic analysis of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions.

Output in the last 12 months: Postgraduate student currently enrolled.

Future directions: Seeking funding to support a venom biodiversity biorepository for further research.

3. Biobank informatics and data quality management/data curation

Collaborating Parties:
Prof Alan Christoffels – SANBI, UWC
Africa CDC
PHA4GE Consortium

Medical Biorepositories SA
Nature and purpose:  Maintenance and enhancement of Baobab LIMS. Entrepreneurship focused on hybrid social and sustainability models for QM software. Standardisation of e-infrastructure. Evaluating the impact of data standardisation in public health and mechanisms to improve data quality across workflows. Development of data platforms for sharing and archiving pathogen data. Strengthening capacity in data curation and development of metadata standards. Facilitating the development of a network of medical biorepositories in South Africa.
Output in the last 12 months: Successful completion of Phase 1 of the African Pathogen Data Sharing and Archive platform with Phase 2 started. Version 1 of the CholGen metadata standard completed and in review. Core module for Baobab LIMS lite developed. The MBiRSA network is being established with ongoing engagements and collaboration and the first summer school training initiative has been completed.  

Future Direction:  New collaborations within Africa as well as training initiatives on the continent. User design thinking in software development as well as building a data curation cohort with regional representation on the continent. Phase 2 of the APA. Biodiversity module of the LIMS Lite core.

4. One Health

Collaborating Parties:  Seeking collaborative partners.
Nature and purpose:  Multidisciplinary approaches to understanding infectious diseases. Development of metadata standards, novel AI based tools for surveillance and species cross-over and translational research in One Health. Examining field-forward technologies bringing molecular biology and ‘-omics’ sequencing to the sample.