Dr
Josephine
Chileshe
Josephine Chileshe is a postdoc research fellow in the biopharming research group at the University of Cape Town. Her current projects include the expression of pharmaceutically relevant recombinant proteins in plants and mammalian cells, and the production of vaccine candidates for various emerging infectious diseases, as well as variety of diagnostics and vaccines for the One Health Initiative.
She holds a BSc Agriculture in Animal Health (North-West University, South Africa), MSc in Veterinary Science (University of Pretoria, South Africa) and a PhD in Molecular Biology (Stellenbosch University, South Africa). She is an animal health technician with a long-term research experience towards prevention and control strategies of bovine tuberculosis in domestic and wildlife animal species. She is skilled in comprehensive understanding and development of new vaccines, and diagnostic tools necessary for disease screening and management strategies.
She is a South African Veterinary Council (SAVC) registered animal health technician with a long-term research interest towards prevention and control strategies of bovine tuberculosis in cattle and African rhinoceros. I am skilled in comprehensive understanding and development of new vaccines, and diagnostic tools necessary for screening and management strategies.
Her research interest is in diagnostics of infectious diseases for both animal and human health. However, her career aspirations include being involved in providing evidence based scientific research on zoonotic and emerging infectious diseases for both human and animal health to aid policy makers to resolve health sector challenges in the African context. Her other interests include capacity building, global health, teaching, mentorship, youth empowerment and leadership.
Zoonoses, animal ethics and policy.
Japanese quails are one of the most efficient egg production systems in nature. The transient expression of recombinant immunoglobulins from in-vivo expression vectors in quails provides a cost effective with high scale strategy for the upstream production of immunoglobulins as well as other Fc fusion proteins for diagnostic, therapeutic and industrial applications. Therefore, we aim to 1) optimize expression of the recombinant protein insert by designing or using other promotors and 5’LIR optimization, 2) design BFDV vector incorporating inducible element regulators, PD-L1 for immunosuppression of native quail IgY production in B cells.