CSIR researchers develop drugs for Africa’s climate

WOMAN researchers at the CSIR have shown that the nurturing spirit of a woman can have a far-reaching impact that benefits not only their immediate communities, but the African continent.

To commemorate Women’s Month, the researchers unveiled some of their ground-breaking research, which seeks to address some of Africa’s health, food security and biomanufacturing challenges.

This includes the work of senior researcher with the CSIR’S Advanced Functional Materials Group, Dr Bathabile Ramalapa, and project leader on the biotherapeutics delivery platform.

Ramalapa and her team are working on an advanced drug delivery system based on polymeric systems, which seek to create drug treatment that will be more affordable but also suitable for the African climate and environment.

Ramalapa said the continent was faced with a lot of noncommunicable threats to which the country had not focused on finding solutions, such as diabetes and breast cancer, which had become the scourge purging communities.

Referencing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report of 2021, Ramalapa said diabetes had surpassed HIV as the second biggest killer in the country, with statistics released in June revealing that as many as 90 000 people in the country had died of diabetes just this year alone.

She said the story was no different with breast cancer as it had become the leading cause of cancer mortality in women in South Africa and globally.

In the South African context, the researcher said patient compliance was standing at 50% on insulin despite this being the most successful treatment for diabetes.

“There is a very high risk of amputation due to wound infection, as we also suffer from a lot of bacterial diseases in Africa. So we have people even with the slightest infection being amputated as doctors can’t find any cure for that infection.”

Ramalapa said the challenges faced by the country were partly due to affordability, as even though 50% of people required insulin treatment, many did not get it as it was unaffordable or they simply did not have access to it.

Furthermore, getting treatment through the private sector is said to range between R60 000 per regiment per annum, with most of the women not even surviving even after having gone through with the treatment.

The researcher said, however, that the core challenges specifically for underserved communities were the cold-chain logistics that went with the treatment.

“Like the Covid-19 vaccine that we were using, insulin requires ultra cold logistics to be transported and kept in the fridge. It needs to be an ultra cold chain in the hospital but people taking them home sometimes don’t even have fridges.

“So the system we have developed is to enhance the drug efficacy through personalised medicines that are developed for Africans and shortening the dose and frequency.”

Through this, she said they could look to commercialise drugs in less than half the conventional time, as it took 10 to 15 years in terms of the science and conducting the tests needed.

This way she said the goal would be to reduce treatment costs to make it affordable for developing countries and ensure that better medicines were created in just three to five years.

“It’s a targeted therapy to go only where the disease is and then there would be reduced toxicity, which would ensure more patient compliance.

“It’s important to protect bio-actives like insulin against environmental factors to ensure we can have these therapies stable at medium temperatures meaning they don’t have to be kept in ultra-cold environments, that way we are able to develop effective systems and able to transport, store and use drugs in the African climate conditions.”