Head of Metabolomics Lab
gabrielm@sun.ac.za
Dr Gabriel Mashabela is a specialist scientist at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Centre for Tuberculosis Research intramural unit. After obtaining his PhD at the University of Cape Town in the Division of Chemical pathology, he joined the Basel University in Switzerland for a postdoctoral fellowship working on a project aimed at elucidating the biosynthetic pathways of low molecular weight thiols produced by pathogenic mycobacteria and trypanosomes. This was later followed by another postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Prof Valerie Mizrahi at the University of Cape Town where he studied the metabolism of vitamin B12 in mycobacteria.
In 2018, he joined the SAMRC Centre for TB research at the Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University. As part of a global effort to combat tuberculosis (TB) and shorten TB drug treatment, Dr Mashabela's research interests focus on the selection, validation and drug targeting of key mycobacterial metabolic pathways that play a critical role in TB pathogenesis, persistence and virulence.