It's not every day that a medical student wins a major science competition above senior academics. But that is precisely what happened recently when MB,ChB VI student, Sean Anderson, won the Young Scientist Competition, clinical category, at the Conference of Biomedical and Natural Sciences and Therapeutics.
Anderson won the award for his work on a paper titled The Neurological Phenotype of Patients with HIV associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND) on Antiretroviral Therapy, in which he examined the neurological data of HIV-positive patients.
Dr Eric Decloedt, Clinical Pharmacologist in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, said he was so impressed with Anderson's work that he explored the possibility of Anderson submitting his work as an independent degree.
“He is a very bright student and the quality of the work he has done exceeds that of most colleagues who train to become specialists," said Decloedt, who chaired the scientific organizing committee of the conference.
Explaining Anderson's work, Decloedt said: “In a nutshell, when a patient is infected with HIV, the neurological system gets infected within days. Despite ARV therapy, these patients continue to present with cognitive impairment. The ARV therapy treat severe forms of cognitive impairment… but the milder forms are still very prevalent despite ARVs. Sean Anderson examined a group of patients and did neurological analyses on them. He looked for whether there were specific neurological signs, such as increased or decreased reflexes and whether that could help diagnose patients with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders in the clinic. He tried to associate the neurological assessment with the degree of cognitive impairment."
The conference, which took place in October and which was hosted by SU's division of Clinical Pharmacology, was the first of its kind in South Africa. Entitled “Interdisciplinary Scientific Excellence", it served as a platform for a number of independent learned societies with shared interests in basic, translational and clinical biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences in SA, including the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APSSA), the Physiology Society of Southern Africa (PSSA), the South African Association for Laboratory Animal Science (SAALAS), the South African Society for Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (SASBCP), the Southern African Neurosciences Society (SANS) and the Toxicology Society of South Africa (TOXSA).
According to Decloedt, there were many highlights to the inter-disciplinary conference, including that SU Rector, Prof Wim De Villiers, opened the conference, and that Prof Jimmy Volmink, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, were among the many distinguished speakers. Another key speaker was Dr Patrice Matchaba, Novartis Global Head of Corporate Responsibility.
Decloedt said the feedback received was that the conference was an overwhelming success. “The idea was to do this every third year, but we've decided to do it more frequently."
Other winners in the competition were Kim Adams who got second place for the paper, Pharmacokinetic study of anti-TB drug PAS and Metabolites and its possible relationship with the development of Toxicity and Jana Winckler from the Desmond Tutu TB Centre who came third for her work, The Pharmacokinetics of High Dose Isoniazid for the Prevention of Treatment of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in HIV-infected and –uninfected Children.
On Anderson's achievement, Decloedt said: “It is a big deal that an undergraduate medical student won the Young Scientist Competition as he was competing against MMed, masters and PhD students.
“We can definitely expect big things from Sean. What impressed me the most was how he managed to engage with the topic in such a short period of time and master the basic aspects of the issue and, using his own initiative, to research this further.
Anderson's cash prize was handed over by Novartis's Matchaba.
Caption: Winners of the Young Scientist Competition, Sean Anderson (far left), Jana Winckler (third from right) and Kim Adams (far right) are seen at the Conference of Biomedical and Natural Sciences and Therapeutics with (from left to right) Dr Eric Decloedt, Profs Helmuth Reuter and Jimmy Volmink, and Dr Patrice Matchaba.
