Along a meandering road: Highlights and lessons in medical virology

Being a virological pathologist working at the interface between the clinic and the laboratory offers the challenge and opportunity to bridge this gap. Since my career in medical virology started, there has been rapid scientific development, but most transformative has been the improvement in patient care: Prior to 2004, HIV-infected patients in the South African public sector could be offered little more than treatment for a few opportunistic infections. In 2006, soon after the rollout started, we offered HIV drug resistance testing as part of research and clinical care. This enabled a better understanding of the reason for failure and HIV-1 drug resistance in children and adults. We also investigated problems with laboratory assays and were often surprised by our findings. As HIV therapy improved and it became a manageable condition, finding cures became the next frontier. Quite serendipitous, my research took a corner to look at HIV persistence in children in order to improve our understanding of future cures. This provided another wonderful opportunity to learn from international leaders in the field. As I continue along this road, I hope to remain a good collaborator and stay open to learn from the unexpected.

WATCH THE INAUGURAL LECTURE HERE

Short biography

Gert Uves van Zyl was born in Durban on 8 November 1972. He attended primary school at Laerskool Pretoria Oos and high school at Hoërskool Menlopark, where he matriculated in 1990. He studied medicine at the University of Pretoria from 1991 to 1996. Thereafter he did his medical internship at Tygerberg Hospital in 1997 and worked as medical officer in paediatrics at Kalafong Academic Hospital and in medical virology at Pretoria Academic Hospital. He started as registrar in virological pathology at Tygerberg Academic Hospital and Stellenbosch University in 2000 and obtained the FCPath(SA)Virol in 2003 and MMed Virological Pathology in 2004. From June 2004 to July 2005 he acted as head of the Department of Medical Virology, Stellenbosch University, and the Virology Laboratory, NHLS Tygerberg. Thereafter he stayed on as a virological pathologist in the Division of Medical Virology. His responsibilities are a diagnostic pathology service, teaching, postgraduate student supervision and research. Prior to 2008 he published only one peer-reviewed article and since then 59, with a Google Scholar citation index of 22. He obtained a PhD in 2012 based on work on HIV drug resistance. His research interests are diagnostic medical virology, HIV drug resistance in children and adults, HIV persistence and early infant HIV diagnosis. His growth as academic benefited from valuable inputs from experienced local and international researchers, skilled collaborative colleagues in various disciplines and knowledgeable and skilled scientists, technologists and postgraduate students in medical virology and the support of a beautiful, clever wife and two lively children.

RSVP to Prof Gert van Zyl’s Inaugural Lecture

Fill in the form before 28 January to attend the lecture.
[contact-form-7 id=”1040″ title=”Prof Gert van Zyl”]