Zvavahera (Mike) Chirenje, MD, FRCOG
Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
College of Health Sciences
University of Zimbabwe
Email: chirenje@uz-ucsf.co.zw
Biosketch:
Zvavahera Mike Chirenje, MD, FRCOG, is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the College of Health Sciences at the University of Zimbabwe. He is an attending Gynecological Oncologist at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe. He also conducts HIV prevention clinical trials in women with a particular emphasis on microbicide and Pre-Exposure Prophlyaxis (PrEP) development.
In 1994, Dr. Chirenje was one of the founding members of the University of Zimbabwe - University of California, San Francisco (UZ-UCSF) Collaborative Research Programme in Women’s Health, and has served as the Executive Director since 2002. He provides fiscal, operational, and scientific oversight of a complex research unit that employs over 280 staff and research investigators. He serves as Principal Investigator for a large NIH-sponsored UZ-UCSF Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) and has successfully applied for NIH grants since 1996 (1996 HIVNET Grant # 5R01AI039013, 1999 HPTN Grant # U01AI047995, 2007 UZ-UCSF CTU Grant # U01AI069436), 2014Grant # UM1AI069436),providing leadership that promotes high quality research for the four affiliated Division of AIDS (DAIDS) funded HIV/AIDS networks of ACTG, HPTN, IMPAACT, and MTN. Dr. Chirenje was Principal Investigator for a large protocol that screened 11,000 women in Harare, which became an international milestone study that demonstrated the effectiveness of VIA in screening cervical cancer in low resource countries. He is chairman of the cervical cancer control programe in Zimbabwe. For the last 25 years, Dr. Chirenje has been Director for the UZ - UCSF Dysplasia Clinic at Spilhaus Clinical Research Site in Harare where he has introduced digital colposcopy, loop excision treatment and cyrotherapy training syllabus for VIA workshops. He is chair of the Mentored Research Scholarship Program at the University of Zimbabwe.
Areas of Interest:
- Cervical Cancer screening and treatment of pre-cancer lesions in low resource settings.
- Natural history of HPV in HIV infected and uninfected women.
- Microbicides development for HIV prevention in women.
- Anti retroviral based clinical trials in PrEP for HIV prevention in women
- Association of HIV with cervical and vulval cancer
Ongoing Research Projects:
Title: A Multi-Center, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Phase 3 Safety and Effectiveness Trial of a Vaginal Matrix Ring Containing Dapivirine for the Prevention of HIV-1 Infection in Women MTN 020 (ASPIRE)
Key Funder(s): National Institute of Health (NIH)
Major Project Goal: To determine the effectiveness of dapirivine (25mg) administered in a silicone elastomer vaginal ring, when inserted once every 4 weeks, in preventing HIV-1 infection among healthy sexually active HIV-uninfected women
Role: Local (Zimbabwe Site) PI.
Title: An observational cohort study of women who became infected with HIV during their participation in MTN trials that aims to understand how microbicides or oral prevention may affect the natural history and progression of HIV - MTN 015
Key Funder: National Institute of Health (NIH)
Major Project Goal: To determine how microbicides and oral prevention may affect the natural history and progression of HIV.
Role: Local (Zimbabwe Site) PI
Updated November 2013