Page 119 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

A Widening Idea of Health: The SAMRC from Creation to Covid

At the Tshwane University of Technology the new Herbal Drugs Research Unit,
the first MRC unit at this institution, sought to take up the ethnopharmacological
mission of the now defunct Traditional Medicines Research Unit by developing
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stringent assessment criteria for African phytomedicines, while at UCT the new
Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance concentrated on tackling the growing tide of
drug-resistant pathogens, especially the TB bacillus in its multi-drug-resistant
form. As part of this task it began to develop what it called ‘antibiotic stewardship’
to counter South Africa’s rampant infectious disease-scape, i.e. the optimal use of
antibiotics so as not to fuel the development of more drug-resistant pathogens in
the course of treatment with antibiotics. In doing so, it was heeding the warning by
a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control that ‘if we use antibiotics
when not needed, we may not have them when they are most needed’. 68
Three other extramural research units and a combined Chinese–MRC genomics
centre aimed to achieve similar therapeutic outcomes but by applying state-of-the-
art gene therapy. While the Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit at the University
of the Witwatersrand pursued the genetic modification of cells and the consequent
development of preventive and therapeutic interventions to arrest viral infections
previously believed to be ‘undruggable’ like hepatitis B, and the Genomics of Brain
Disorders Research Unit at Stellenbosch University investigated how psychiatric
genetics might reveal genomic biomarkers for disorders like schizophrenia and
parkinsonism, the Precision and Genomic Medicine Research Unit at UCT went
further. Not only did it seek to discover if there is a genetic basis to two hereditary
diseases found especially among Africans, colorectal cancer and degenerative retinal
disease, but it aimed to go beyond this by applying a genomic lens to analysing the
underpinnings of the diversity of most diseases and thereby improve their clinical
management and tailor it to individuals.
It was with such a grand vision in mind that in 2019 the MRC collaborated with
the Beijing Genomics Institute to establish a Joint Genomics Centre based at the
MRC. Initially, the Centre prioritized the transfer of skills in bioinformatics and
genomics workflow from the Chinese scientists to their South African counterparts,
but soon this was taken a step further when the renamed African Genomics Centre’s
research projects became part of the MRC’s product development programme; two
years later the Centre, even more ambitiously, initiated a whole genome-sequencing
platform (the first in Africa), with the intention of adding African populations to a
global genetic database, thereby significantly expanding its compass. As the president
of the MRC averred, big data of this sort was ‘the new currency’.
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