FABI team members, including Prof. Cobus Visagie, Prof. Mike Wingfield, Prof. Brenda Wingfield, Dr Neriman Yilmaz and Mr Taygen Fuchs, hosted researchers from the NICD (National Institute for Communicable Diseases) and WITS Mycology Division on Friday, 13 June, including Prof. Vindana Chibabhai, Prof. Nelesh Govender, Dr Serisha Naicker, Dr Tsidiso Maphanga, Ms Ruth Mpembe, Ms Miriam Mwamba and Ms Gift Sandhleni. The long-anticipated meeting was arranged as part of ongoing efforts to establish linkages between medical mycologists and those working mainly on fungi in the environment. Motivation for the meeting initially emerged from Prof. Mike Wingfield’s Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award project that was focused on Cryptococcus species in the natural environment and Sporothrix schenckii in South African gold mines (the MSc project of Taygen Fuchs).

The meeting was particularly timely considering recent news that the Wellcome Trust (call on the Biology of fungal adaptation) will fund a project CryptoADAPT with Dr Naicker as the lead applicant and Profs. Govender and Visagie as co-applicants. Other co-applicants include Prof. Matthew Fisher (Imperial College London), Prof. Francois Roets (Stellenbosch University), Dr Marco Antonio Dias Coelho (DUKE University), Dr John Mwaba (University of Zambia) and Dr Sergio Fernando (Massora Centro de investigação em Saúde de Manhiça). Cryptococcus, mainly C. neoformans and C. gattii, is one of the most important opportunistic human fungal pathogens, with mounting evidence that suggests an evolutionary origin in southern Africa. The project brings together a multidisciplinary team and combines ecology, experimental evolution, genomics and fungal biology to better understand human exposures to Cryptococcus across African biodiversity hotspots.

The group also discussed ongoing projects on Sporothrix. Sporotrichosis is the most common lab-diagnosed endemic mycosis in South Africa, yet we have little understanding of the main causal species, S. schenckii. The discussion was led by Tsidiso Maphanga and Taygen Fuchs, who presented their current research on the topic and considered opportunities to combine efforts towards a better understanding of Sporothrix. Several other potential projects were discussed, including future proposals that will be developed, for example, on Fusarium and Aspergillus.