Lizma Streicher

Elizabeth joined the department of Medical Biochemistry in 2001 as a B.Sc. Hons student and continued with her postgraduate studies, post-doctoral fellowship and is currently a research scientist in the Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics. As part of her postgraduate studies, she established and standardized a rapid tuberculosis genotyping technique, spoligotyping, in their laboratory, the first laboratory on the African continent to implement it. 

During her studies, she also established a culture bank with a concomitant database of drug resistant M. tuberculosis isolates from patients from the Western Cape Province. Elizabeth continues to manage this resource, which currently has more than 45000 TB cultures (which includes drug resistant and drug susceptible strains). This is a very valuable resource in the department and forms the basis for various different student research studies and national and international collaboration. This database and sample bank contributed significantly to our current understanding and interpretation of molecular epidemiology data and was central to a paradigm shift in our understanding of exogenous reinfection, dual infections, host genetics, and mechanisms and spread of drug resistance.  

A special area of interest of Elizabeth’s research has been acquisition of drug resistance and specifically the influence of hetero resistance on the molecular based drug resistance diagnostics.