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25 April 2022 | Story Elsabé Brits
Andre Roodt and Alice Brink
Prof Andreas Roodt and Prof Alice Brink are two of the inventors of the ‘Multinuclear complexes and their preparation patent.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, or nearly one in six. The most common cancers are breast, lung, colon, rectum, and prostate cancers. There is a constant need to provide methods to diagnose and treat cancer-related tumours.  Current research strategies focus on eliminating cancer cells with the minimum damage to surrounding healthy cells.

A limitation of current technologies is that they are mostly based on the separate identification of cancer (diagnostic), followed by treatment (therapy) using chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. To fit both needs at the same time and with similar or identical compounds, the principle of theranostic medicine was identified. This concept employs both diagnosing (by imaging) cancer and delivering therapy (treatment) simultaneously, which has been receiving increased attention internationally.

Collaborating with the University of Zurich
A University of the Free State (UFS) team, together with a team from the University of Zürich, conducted exciting research in this area and filed a patent titled ‘Multinuclear complexes and their preparation’. The patent was granted in South Africa and by the European Patent Office. It is being validated in selected European countries. The patent is pending in the USA, Japan, Hong Kong, and India. The inventors from the UFS are Prof Andreas Roodt, Prof Alice Brink, Dr Pennie Mokolokolo, and Dr Vincent Dumisani Kama. The approach that their technology takes is to enable the synthesis of a multinuclear compound/s, which may contain different pre-selected radioisotopes, to allow both imaging and therapy to the cancer site(s) with one and the same metal-organic complex.

So far, high-yield production of compounds has been successfully innovated, which contain both an imaging (in particular the widely utilised imaging isotope Technetium-99m) and therapeutic (typically the therapeutic isotope Rhenium-186) radioactive isotope(s), optionally carrying an additional cytotoxic agent. (Chemotherapy uses anti-cancer [cytotoxic] drugs to destroy cancer cells.)

Nuclear medicine technologies
In the next phase of the research, a lead compound portfolio of four to five model pharmaceuticals containing these metal nuclides with appropriate directing groups to target cancer sites will be designed and constructed. A number of these entities are known and can be introduced through different techniques. These will then undergo full characterisation and efficacy evaluation in biological models (in vitro), followed by extensive animal and human trials.

The technology will be delivered as a product or service in the way that current nuclear medicine technologies are delivered.

The fact that this product(s) contains both imaging and therapeutic radionuclides or cytotoxic modalities, enables detailed tracking of the pharmaceutical and monitoring of the tumours' response to the therapy. Not directly related to the patent, but an asset to it, is the fact that the incorporation of rhenium with a high atomic number (Z = 75) opens the additional opportunity to utilise the multinuclear compounds also as radiosensitisers. Synergistic effects, enhancing the therapeutic efficacy, can thus be expected in combination with radiotherapy.

The UFS would like to partner with a pharmaceutical company working in the field of nuclear medicine to commercialise this technology. Interested parties can contact Ravini Moodley at MoodleyR5@ufs.ac.za

News Archive

Harvard couple to present lectures on Biostatistics and Mathematics at the UFS
2015-12-07


Professor Donald Rubin

Prof Donald Rubin (John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics at Harvard University) and Elizabeth Zell (MStat - mathematical statistician in the Division of Bacterial Diseases) will visit the University of the Free State (UFS) where they will present lectures on their respective work.

Over his prestigious academic career, Prof Don Rubin’s 400 publications and 13 books have earned him around 180 000 citations at an h-index of 113. He is one of the most cited statisticians/mathematicians/economists/psychologists in the world over the last 10 -15 years. He has supervised 35 PhD candidates as sole-supervisor, 17 more as co-supervisor, with a further eight in the pipeline.

Prof Rubin who will meet with UFS academics in the Department of Mathematics and Actuarial Sciences will also deliver a lecture: Rerandomisation to improve covariate balance in experiments.

Randomised experiments are the “gold standard” for estimating causal effects, yet in practice, chance imbalances often exist in covariate distributions between treatment groups. If covariate data are available before units are exposed to treatments, these chance imbalances can be mitigated by first checking covariate balance before the physical experiment takes place. Provided a precise definition of imbalance has been specified in advance, unbalanced randomisations can be discarded, followed by a rerandomisation. This process can continue until a randomisation yielding balance according to the definition is achieved. By improving covariate balance, rerandomisation provides more precise and trustworthy estimates of treatment effects.

Prof Rubin received an honorary professorship from the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.


Elizabeth Zell

The lecture will take place on:
Date: Tuesday 8 December 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus

Zell earned her Master’s degree in Statistics at North Carolina State University, and for more than two decades, was an active bio-statistical researcher in various offices of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Since 2013, she has been the Principal Statistician and President of Stat-Epi Associates, Inc. Her 150+ publications have earned her 14 500 citations at an h-index of over 50. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and, in 2010, she received the Statistics Section Government Award for outstanding contributions to statistics and public health by the American Public Health Association. During her career at the CDC, she earned more than 20 CDC research awards and honours.

She will deliver two lectures at the UFS. The first is entitled A Potential Outcomes Approach to Documenting the Public Health Impact of the Introduction of PCV13 for the Prevention of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease. The topic of her second lecture is: Assessing the Effectiveness of Intrapartum Antibiotic Prophylaxis for Prevention of Early-Onset Group B Streptococcus Disease through Propensity Score Design

Elizabeth’s lectures will take place on:
Date: Wednesday 9 December 2015
Time: 10:45 and 13:00
Venue: West Block 111, Bloemfontein Campus

For more information, please contact Dr Michael von Maltitz at VMaltitzMJ@ufs.ac.za.

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