Dr Keletso Maepa

Keletso Maepa holds an undergraduate degree in Chemistry, Human Anatomy & Physiology and a BMedSc honours in Clinical Pharmacology, both from UCT. He then pursued an MSc in Clinical Pharmacology in 2018, which was upgraded to a PhD. In September 2023, he then joined H3D as a Carnegie DEAL and NRF postdoctoral fellow.

Keletso’s PhD dissertation was on understanding how specific clinically utilised antimalarial drugs interfere with the malaria parasite’s ability to detoxify haem released from the digestion of haemoglobin. His primary focus was to develop bioanalytical techniques with high-throughput capability to quantify the effects of these drugs on intracellular haem species in malaria parasites.

Currently, his postdoctoral research fellowship focuses on investigating the mechanisms of action and resistance of experimental antimalarial compounds via phenotypic and genomic approaches.