Dr Felix Dube

Broader research interests here include the evolution and epidemiology of infectious diseases. The current focus is on Streptococcus pneumoniae (the ‘pneumococcus’), a bacterium that is a major bacterial cause of diseases including pneumonia and meningitis worldwide. By applying high-throughput genome sequencing techniques, this work will provide further insights into the pneumococcal pathobiome, especially changes in pneumococcal sero-epidemiology, pathogenesis and the application of phylogenetic, statistical and computational approaches to unravel genotype-phenotype associations. This work is interfaced with an in-depth characterization of the nasopharyngeal resistome in children colonized by pneumococci.  This work has important relevance to: i) Development of more broadly protective vaccines; ii)  Understanding how antimicrobial resistance determinants evolve and spread; iii) Long-term effectiveness of the existing pneumococcal conjugate vaccines design of future vaccines and iv) Understand microbial interactions in diverse ecological niches predispose to disease.

1. Felix Dube, Mamadou Kaba, F.J Lourens Robberts, Lemese Ah Tow, Sugnet Lubbe, Heather J. Zar, Mark P. Nicol. Respiratory microbes present in the nasopharynx of children hospitalised with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis in Cape Town, South Africa. BMC ID. 2016 Oct 16:597; DOI: 10.1186/s12879-016-1934-z
2. Felix Dube, Kaba M, Whittaker E, Zar HJ, Nicol MP. Detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae from Different Types of Nasopharyngeal Swabs in Children. PLoS One.2013 Jun 26;8(6): e68097. Print 2013. PubMed PMID: 23840817; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3694050.
3. Felix Dube and Sugnet Gardner-Lubbe: Visualisation of quadratic discriminant analysis and its application in exploration of microbial interactions. BioData Mining 2015, 8:8  doi:10.1186/s13040-015-0041-9
4. Felix Dube, S P Van Mens, Lourens Robberts, N Wolter, J Mafofo, P Nicol, H Zar, M P Nicol Comparison of a Multiplex Real-Time PCR and Sequetyping Assay for Pneumococcal Serotyping. PLoS One. 2015 Sep 3; 10(9): e0137349. Doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137349
5. Rudzani Muloiwa, Felix Dube, Mark P. Nicol, Gregory D. Hussey, Heather J. Zar: Incidence and Diagnosis of Pertussis in South African Children Hospitalized with Lower Respiratory Tract Infection. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2016 Mar 10