Africa Health Research Institute

Dr Emily Wong is an Infectious Disease physician-scientist whose work focuses on trying to understand the impact of HIV infection on TB pathogenesis, immunity and epidemiology.  To address these questions she uses a range of techniques that span molecular to population science.

Emily specialises in establishing unique human cohorts to address fundamental questions about infectious disease and immune responses. Emily is one of the co-Primary Investigators of Vukuzazi, AHRI’s population-based health ‘omics study that links the longstanding demographic surveillance population to next-generation science.  Designed to shed light on genetic and acquired drivers of health and disease, Vukuzazi defines deep human phenotypes using community-based health screening for HIV, TB and non-communicable diseases and collects biosamples to support genomic and transcriptomic study in a population of 30 000 people in the uMkhanyakude district of KwaZulu-Natal.  Vukuzazi enrolled 18,041 participants between 2018-2020.  Emily’s research team is involved in several collaborative projects analyzing baseline Vukuzazi data and longitudinal follow-up of individuals with specific phenotypes important to understanding TB. In collaboration with the Department of Pulmonology at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital, she established Phefumula, a research bronchoscopy cohort that allows comparative study of immune cells from the mucosal surface of the lung and the peripheral blood of people with well-defined states of HIV and TB.

Emily’s clinical and research interests have focused on the intersections of the HIV and TB epidemics in South Africa since she first worked in Durban in 2003. She witnessed the profound toll of the HIV-epidemic in KZN and was inspired by health care workers and activists who fought to make antiretroviral therapy available in the public sector. To try to better understand the causes of HIV-related mortality after ARV rollout, Emily worked with colleagues in Johannesburg to conduct a post-mortem needle autopsy study to determine the causes of death of patients dying in the first months of antiretroviral therapy; this work revealed very high rates of disseminated tuberculosis and tuberculosis immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome. Funded by a career development fellowship from the NIH, Emily then focused on trying to understand the immune response to TB in the human lung through study of immune cells in the respiratory mucosa. She particularly focused on a novel class of innate lymphocytes, Mucosal Associated Invariant T (MAIT) cells, trying to understand their role in anti-TB immunity and how HIV altered their function.  Since the launch of Vukuzazi, Emily’s research group spans the Durban and Somkhele campuses of AHRI and aims to bring together next-generation molecular techniques with population science to understand and interrupt drivers of TB infection and disease in the context of HIV hyperendemnicity.

In addition to her resident faculty appointment at AHRI, Emily is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases.  She is also an Associate Scientist in the UAB Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and has a secondary appointment in the UAB Department of Microbiology.  When not in the lab, Emily can be found trying to keep up with her children’s interests, which these days means juggling online and in person primary school and chasing after a bicycle-riding 3-year-old on the beachfront.

Get in touch with Emily via emily.wong@ahri.org

Click here for a full list of publications.