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Prof Mark Cotton

Mark Cotton, who is the Director of the Children’s Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Unit (Kid-Cru) at the FMHS and the Tygerberg Children’s Hospital (TCH), is an internationally acclaimed specialist in the field of paediatric infectious diseases with extensive experience in managing HIV-infected children. He has led the Children's Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Unit (Kid-Cru) team in a number of randomised clinical trials in children, including two studies on antiretroviral therapy (ART) strategy and isoniazid prophylaxis and antiretroviral (ARV) pharmacokinetics in HIV-infected children.

He completed a three year fellowship in paediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado-Denver, and also conducted laboratory-based research on apoptosis in paediatric HIV under the supervision of Dr Terri Finkel at the National Jewish Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Immunology. On return to Stellenbosch University, he completed a PhD on the role of apoptosis in paediatric HIV infection. He has since been conducting a number of multicentre trials focusing on Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV in children.

He is affiliated to the International Maternal Paediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) and Paediatric European Network for Treatment of AIDS (PENTA) networks and has provided technical support for the World Health Organisation initiatives since 2004 on the Classification for HIV, antiretroviral guidelines and TB-HIV co-infection. He is the principal investigator for the Stellenbosch University Clinical Trials Unit (SUN-CTU) with special focus on TB and HIV.