Innovating for the Future - Bringing Positive Change to the World

Tech Reduces The Risk Of Diabetic Ulcers

Approximately 60% of the 436 million adults (in 2019) diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) will develop diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). A common symptom of DPN is loss of cutaneous sensation in the feet, which can lead to foot ulcers and subsequent lower limb amputation. Except by trained health professionals using expensive diagnostic equipment, sensory loss is difficult to diagnose before an ulcer develops and misdiagnosis easily occurs through interpretive errors. UWC’s Physiotherapy Department is refining a prototype to serve as a diagnostic, monitoring and therapeutic device with an associated smartphone app that could track a patient’s cutaneous sensation over time. The device is expected to be cost-effective and accessible with the potential of providing more consistent and reliable results. This could allow patients the opportunity to self-diagnose and monitor sensory loss as well as potentially improve cutaneous sensation.

Using Sunshine To Stay Cool

Poor people living in rural settings often lack refrigeration and electricity, which makes long-distance delivery of fresh perishable food and pharmaceutical supplies (e.g. ARVs and insulin) that require refrigeration challenging. UWC’s SA Institute of Advanced Materials Chemistry believes one solution could be a lightweight, insulated, solar-charged battery-powered coolbox. This coolbox can be used to maintain the cold chain for food and medical products from the factory to the market, as a point of sale or as a small fridge. People living beyond the extensions of the electrical grid will benefit from the flexible design, as the multipurpose 48V battery pack can be removed and used to run small household appliances. A third prototype has been refined that has proven to be both compact and efficient in its cooling capabilities.

Biosurfactants

Surfactants (or surface-active agents) are special molecules that can reduce the surface tension of liquids and therefore assist substances that don’t normally mix, like water and oil, to come together and mix more easily. Surfactants are among the most versatile chemicals used in the food, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries but do not degrade easily.

Biosurfactants are surfactants made by microorganisms like bacteria or fungi that have the added advantage of being biodegradable and environmentally friendly but the disadvantage of achieving low yields. The Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics (IMBM) at UWC has patented two genetic constructs that not only significantly increase biosurfactant yield but also enable the user to control the type of biosurfactant that is produced by E.coli bacteria. IMBM boasts an extensive collection of bacterial strains from diverse and extreme environments across South Africa and the resulting genetic libraries may yield other biosurfactant compounds.

iBATECH

iBATECH is a natural biostimulant developed for the agricultural input industry under the leadership of Prof Jeremy Klaassen of the Department of Medical Biosciences. The product is derived from extracts of the indigenous kraalbos plant (Galenia africana) that contain a combination of several flavonoids that display antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. Trials show that applications of iBATECH significantly increase chlorophyll, nitrogen and flavonoid content in the leaves of various crops while increasing the natural defences of pests and diseases. iBATECH will be commercialised in the agrochemical industry as a registered group 3 fertiliser that improves overall crop health and food quality.

Family Resilience Strengthening Programme

Rural and low-income families have difficulty accessing psychological services despite a great need for more family focused interventions due to the impacts of a lack of life skills, poor education, economic deprivation and social problems in communities. Resources such as private psychologists or programmes are associated with unaffordable fees, a commitment of often months or years and locations in resource rich areas. The Family Resilience Strengthening Programme developed by the Department of Psychology is a four-module, strengths-based, psycho-educative intervention to increase the family resilience of multi-challenged families. Participants will engage with fictitious family case studies to better understand family dynamics, identity and roles and acquire practical life skills and a better sense of where to access resources to assist their ongoing development.

Indigenous Plant Research

More than 700 plant species are traded as traditional medicine in informal markets in southern Africa. Some of the species and applications from South Africa’s rich botanical resources and indigenous knowledge currently investigated at UWC include:

Leonotis leonurus (lion’s tail or wild dagga). Infusions of the plant are traditionally used in the Eastern Cape to treat neurological disorders. Using modern bioinformatic human proteome compound interaction techniques, UWC’s research shows that many of the chemical constituents of L. leonurus can potentially interact with enzymes and proteins that are involved in the development of mental health disorders.

In traditional medicine, the leaves of Lippia javanica (fevertree) and Myrothamnus flabellifolus (resurrection bush) are used to treat a wide range of ailments, including asthma. Research shows positive preliminary results of the potential anti-asthmatic properties of L. javanica and M. flabellifolus

UWC researchers are investigating the anti-cancer properties of Galenia africana (kraalbos). G. africana was used in Khoi medicine to treat wounds, toothache, venereal disease, ringworm, eye inflammation, various skin diseases, asthma and even tuberculosis.

Paediatric Hiv

An estimated 1,8 million children (0–14 years) globally are currently living with HIV. If untreated or poorly treated, the paediatric HIV mortality rate in children under the age of two years may increase to 50%. A major challenge in the management of HIV in children is poor adherence to treatment regimens due to the lack of child-specific dosage forms. Children resist swallowing tablets and capsules and the liquid forms of antiretrovirals (ARVs), which are bitter. Improving drug palatability will improve ARV therapy adherence. The School of Pharmacy is investigating child-friendly dosage forms through the preparation of natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) that will act as powerful solubilising agents for the identified ARVs, allowing dosages to be reduced in volume and administered in a better-tasting liquid form.

Black Soldier Fly

The Department of Chemistry has collaborated with a commercial partner to develop uses for material extracted from black soldier flies, including a solvent-based process for extracting lipids that may be used in the food and pharmaceutical industries; nonwoven textiles from chitin (a polysaccharide in the exoskeleton-)-and-chitosan (a compound also found in crustacean shells) for possible use as disposable wipes or mask filters; and nanofibres from chitosan that could be used to filter heavy metals.

Fuel Cell Forklift

Forklifts powered by hydrogen fuel cells offer several advantages over electric battery-powered counterparts, including no loss of charge while operating and a much shorter and more labour-efficient refuelling time. Commercially available fuel cell-powered forklifts have required high-pressure storage and refuelling at 350 bar, which is achieved with expensive mechanical compression. UWC-based HySA Systems integrated a fuel cell unit with metal hydride hydrogen extension tanks, allowing a reduction of the hydrogen storage and refuelling pressure to 185 bar. HySA Systems designed, built and installed a hydrogen-fuelled forklift and hydrogen refuelling station at Impala Platinum refineries in 2016, which is still in use. The refuelling station is considerably cheaper to operate and can be custom designed for the number of forklifts that need refuelling.

ANTI-HIJACKING APP

Computer Science master’s student Taahir Patel and his supervisor, Prof Clement Nyirenda, are developing an app using Twitter data to pinpoint and map car hijackings. With 23 000 hijacking cases reported nationally in 2022, hijacking is a concern for South African drivers. Reasoning that victims or witnesses of hijackings would be moved to immediately alert people on social media platforms like Twitter, Patel realised there was a wealth of information that would be helpful to drivers and police if it could be connected and easily available. He is considering expanding the design of the app to include other social media platforms and the possibility of using the app without directly accessing social media platforms.

Tackling TB with Nanotech

A research group at UWC’s School of Pharmacy led by Prof Admire Dube is developing a treatment for tuberculosis that involves applying nanoparticles to achieve immunotherapy by targeting drug delivery to the cells hosting TB bacteria in the lungs. This not only enhances drug delivery (normally delivered drugs would go anywhere in the body while the nanoparticles target the lungs where antibiotics are most needed) but triggers the body’s immune system to fight the infection, raising the possibility of a faster recovery.

PAN-AFRICAN BIOINFORMATICS COLLABORATION

A prototype has been readied for the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Africa PGI) Data Management and Exchange Platform, a virtual repository to store genomic sequencing data on disease-causing pathogens in Africa. The platform is an initiative of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). More than a database, it will give users access to bioinformatics tools that allow researchers to run critical analyses of the data on the platform itself to determine what kind of virus or bacterium they’re dealing with. According to Prof Alan Christoffels, Director of UWC’s South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) and a senior advisor to the Africa PGI, the pan-African platform will foster the collaboration needed to fight disease outbreaks in Africa.

COVID-19 ANTIGEN TEST

Despite the World Health Organization announcing the end of the global emergency status of COVID-19, the virus is still present. People with comorbidities are particularly at risk and still need to consider taking vaccine boosters and getting tested for the virus when they exhibit symptoms. Medical Diagnostech, a company founded by UWC alumnus Ashley Uys, has developed the first COVID-19 antigen test in Africa with the help of Audere, a global digital health non-profit organisation. The home test kit, HealthPulse TestNow, produces a result within 15 seconds. It is the first African-manufactured COVID-19 test to be approved by SAHPRA.