South Africa's high burden of tuberculosis, HIV and cancer is being turned into a selling point for nuclear medicine research, with Professor Mike Sathekge saying the country's disease profile is helping local scientists develop techniques for early detection and treatment.
Who Gets Stuck Living With the Burden
Sathekge, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nuclear Medicine Research Infrastructure, said South Africa's experience with diseases common on the continent gives its scientists expertise that can complement research in countries where those illnesses are less common. He made the comments while speaking to the media on the sidelines of the High-Level Conference on International Cooperation in Open Science in Shanghai, China.
The conference is part of the build-up to the 19th Pujiang Innovation Forum, where South Africa will participate as Country of Honour. The South African delegation is led by Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, Professor Blade Nzimande. The whole setup has the familiar smell of official prestige: ministers, forums, country-of-honour branding, and a state eager to package hardship as innovation capital.
Sathekge said international scientific cooperation should go beyond comparing countries' capabilities and instead connect researchers with complementary knowledge. "Instead of comparing, we must connect with the other countries. That is critical if we are to benchmark while we are looking at the problems and the burden of disease in our country," he said. "How do we use that expertise to also inform the region - Africa - but also consider what the other colleagues are doing and take it from there?"
What the Scientists Say They Can Do
South Africa could contribute important knowledge on TB, HIV and cancer through its work in radiotheranostics and nuclear medicine, Sathekge said. Nuclear medicine uses small amounts of radioactive materials to examine the functioning of organs and tissues, diagnose diseases and deliver targeted treatments.
"In this regard, for example, you would be aware that we have quite a burden of diseases in South Africa. We can show that radiotheranostics and nuclear medicine can be part and parcel of addressing this," he said.
He said South African researchers have helped produce evidence showing that the progression of TB is not uniform and that lesions in the same patient may respond differently to treatment. "We have been key in contributing to show that the pathogenesis of tuberculosis is heterogeneous. How you really treat it might not be as easy as the usual six months. How do we change it? Is treatment going to be prolonged?" Sathekge said.
That matters because the people at the bottom of the system are the ones living with the consequences of delayed diagnosis and one-size-fits-all treatment. Sathekge said understanding these differences could help researchers develop biomarkers that show how patients are responding without relying only on expensive imaging technology. "Those biomarkers can be validated to detect patients very early. That brings complicated nuclear medicine techniques to actually help derive better on-site techniques that will help our patients."
He also said nuclear medicine could help assess whether new TB medicines are working inside a patient's body. "The lesions are not the same in tuberculosis. You need to be clear that this lesion will respond earlier, and the other one will respond later," he said. That information could help doctors decide which patients need longer treatment or a combination of medical treatment and surgery, and it could help prevent the disease from recurring.
What They Call Innovation
Sathekge said similar technologies could help address cancer, especially because many South African patients are diagnosed only after the disease has reached an advanced stage. He said medical imaging should be treated as an essential part of healthcare, not as an unaffordable luxury.
"Imaging should not be a luxury. It is part and parcel of what we need. It helps with therapies but also makes sure that we can have precision medicine here and not just theoretically," Sathekge said.
South Africa's nuclear medicine research is part of the country's health innovation capabilities being showcased in China. The Pujiang Innovation Forum is expected to give South Africa a platform to promote research partnerships, knowledge exchange, technology transfer and investment while positioning the country as a gateway to Africa's innovation ecosystem. The forum runs from 11 to 14 September.
The language is polished. The machinery behind it is familiar. Disease becomes a resource for international branding, and the state gets to present itself as a broker of progress while ordinary people still face TB, HIV and cancer as daily realities. Sathekge's pitch is about connection, benchmarking and cooperation. The structure around him is about hierarchy, access and who gets to define what counts as useful knowledge.