Best Abstract Awards Recipients

Khanyisile Mngomezulu

Abstract Title: Investigating the potential of traditional medicines in reactivation of latent HIV-1

Khanyisile Mngomezulu is a doctoral candidate in the Discipline of Traditional Medicine, School of Nursing and Public Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She obtained her Masters in Medical Sciences and BSc Honors in Medical Microbiology. Her doctoral research focuses on finding traditional medicinal plants with the ability to reactivate latent HIV using laboratory models. Her research study is being conducted in collaboration with world class researchers from the Simon Fraser University, University of Pretoria, and the Africa Health Research Institute of the University of KwaZulu Natal.

This research has the potential to resolve one of the last stumbling blocks to treatment of HIV, which is the inability of highly active antiretroviral therapy to clear HIV copies in latently infected immune cells. She has also authored and co-authored papers in peer- reviewed journals.