Savannah Mwesigwa

Savannah Mwesigwa is a research fellow at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, where he also obtained his PhD. For his doctoral studies, he used a next-generation sequencing approach known as  Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) to examine the genetic factors underlying HIV disease progression in a pediatric African cohort. This cohort included long-term non-progressors (LTNP), a phenotype observed in about 10% of children born with HIV who take more than ten years to progress to AIDS. Typically WES is used to study the protein-coding regions of the genome (exome); however, Mwesigwa utilised an unconventional approach to extract and analyse “off-target” DNA reads from WES data that map to viral DNA. His research investigated the relationship between co-infecting viruses and pediatric HIV disease progression. His research findings identified a connection between co-infection with viruses such as the Anelloviriade and LTNP status. If further validated, these viruses could serve as critical markers for HIV disease progression or immune status. For his post-doc training, he is using the same pediatric cohort to investigate the role of mitochondrial genetics in pediatric HIV progression.