By Lebone Rodah Mosima
Losing her father to chemotherapy-related complications three years ago spurred Dr Bawinile Hadebe to explore improved approaches to cancer treatment, a pursuit that has earned her the Saul Hertz Young Investigator Award.
Hadebe, a senior UKZN lecturer and head of the Nuclear Medicine Clinical Unit at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital (IALCH) in Durban, received the award at the eighth Theranostic World Conference in Cape Town in February in recognition of her PhD work in theranostics.
Theranostics is a personalised approach to treatment that integrates diagnostic techniques and targeted therapies to detect and treat various cancers.
The award honours her PhD work in CXCR4-targeted imaging and her contribution to targeted radionuclide therapies for prostate and neuroendocrine tumours.
The work was done under the guidance of her supervisor and head of the Nuclear Medicine Discipline, Professor Mariza Vorster, UKZN said.
“Cancer is a growing challenge worldwide, and we urgently need new ways to fight it. Theranostics is an exciting approach that lets us ‘see what we treat and treat what we see’,” said Hadebe.
“We use a special ‘search-and-destroy’ approach that involves injecting the patient with a specific radiotracer, which finds and highlights cancer cells on a scan (allowing us to see the cancer). We then inject a radiotracer with a more potent radiation, which delivers a targeted dose of radiation to kill those cancer cells while leaving the healthy parts of the body unharmed.
“Since this treatment targets the cancer directly, unlike other treatments such as chemotherapy, which target the whole body, we can avoid many of the harsh side effects often seen with chemotherapy,” she said.
Hadebe, who hails from eHlokozi in iXopo on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal, said she knows the harsh effects of chemotherapy after watching her father endure the physical and emotional toll of treatment, a journey that ended with his death in 2022.
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Targeted radionuclide therapy, she said, remains a distant dream for many patients and more effort is needed to make it more accessible.
Watching what happened to her father deepened her conviction that patients deserve treatments that are more precise and less debilitating, she said.
“My father is the quiet strength behind my work. I see his face in every patient I treat, fuelling my drive to redefine what is possible in cancer care.”
The award is named after Dr Saul Hertz, described as the father of theranostics, and is marking its 85th anniversary this year, recognising Hertz’s pioneering work with radioactive iodine, which began in 1941 and laid the foundation for radiotheranostics.
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