ISSUE 19 | JANUARY 2017
CONTACTISSUE THE ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE: 19 | JANUARY 2017
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UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE
ALUMNI NEWSLETTER
UWC researcher Usisipho Feleni was honoured with the prestigious L’Oréal-UNESCO Fellowship for her work with drug dosages for breast cancer patients.
UWC science student scoops prestigious international award
U
niversity of the Western Cape (UWC) researcher Usisipho Feleni has been awarded the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science Fellowship, her second prestigious science award in 2016. Earlier in the year she received an award at the Department of Science and Technology’s South African Women in Science Awards (WISA). The young researcher is doing groundbreaking work in determining medication dosages for breast cancer patients. Feleni’s research involves developing a device to determine appropriate dosages of tamoxifen, a drug routinely prescribed to breast cancer patients and patients at risk of developing
breast cancer. Feleni obtained her BSc Honours in chemistry in 2012 and her MSc (with a specialisation in nanochemistry) from UWC in 2014. She is currently enrolled for a PhD in Chemistry (specialising in nanobiosensors) at UWC. Her research projects during both honours and master’s degrees focused on how ARVs are broken down in the body. This led her to a better understanding of drug toxicity, how drugs respond differently in individuals, and how different patients have unique drug dose-response profiles. Feleni says she is fascinated with inter-individual variability in drug metabolism, particularly for antiretroviral, anti-tuberculosis and breast cancer
drugs, and how this is related to patients’ responses to treatment, drug toxicity and drug resistance. Her supervisor, Professor Emmanuel Iwuoh, says Feleni follows other female SensorLab PhD researchers who have won local and international accolades for the relevance of their research into national and global challenges. “Prominent among these awards is the L’Oréal-UNESCO Fellowship for women scientists from Sub-Saharan Africa, which SensorLab reseachers won in 2012, 2013 and 2014,” says Prof Iwuoh. Of the 6 500 applications received, only 250 L’Oréal-UNESCO fellowships are awarded annually.
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