A new inhalable nanomedicine developed at the Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) could help outwit one of humanity’s oldest diseases—tuberculosis (TB).

Dr Lindokuhle Ngema, a postdoctoral researcher at WADDP, has engineered a nanosystem capable of delivering all four standard TB drugs directly into the lungs, where the bacteria that cause the disease—Mycobacterium tuberculosis—hide and persist. The formulation aims to bypass the liver and bloodstream, reduce drug loss, and concentrate medication precisely at the site of infection.

“TB is clever—it hides in lung pockets where oral drugs can’t reach. Our system is designed to be smarter and to go exactly where it’s needed,” says Ngema.

TB remains a leading cause of death worldwide, claiming more than 56,000 lives in South Africa alone in 2023. Current treatments require months of daily pills and can cause severe side effects, fuelling poor adherence and the emergence of drug-resistant TB.

By transforming TB therapy into an inhalable treatment, WADDP researchers hope to improve patient adherence, shorten treatment duration, and reduce resistance. The nanosystem’s movement through the lungs will be tracked in collaboration with the Nuclear Medicine Research Institute (NuMeRI), using nuclear imaging to confirm delivery to “hidden” infection sites.

For how much time we spend staring at our phones and computers, it was inevitable that we would become… close. And the resulting human relationships with computer programs are nothing short of complex, complicated, and unprecedented. AI is capable of simulating human conversations by way of chatbots, which has led to an historic twist for therapists.

One in four adults over the age of 25 will have a stroke in a lifetime, according to the Global Stroke Fact Sheet 2025. Awareness remains key for early intervention and prevention of cardiovascular disease. Advances in genomic science are now offering a new lens to identify these risks early—sometimes decades before a stroke occurs.

When Rice University doctoral candidate Barclay Jumet first launched a high school business designing, making and selling bow ties — learning to sew on his mother’s college sewing machine — he never imagined that same skill set would one day help him reinvent how people communicate. Today alongside adviser Daniel J. Preston, Jumet is co-founder of Actile Technologies, a startup transforming everyday fabrics into smart, touch-based communication devices.

Tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber have climbed to 45 per cent, following a recent increase of 10 per cent on lumber and 25 per cent on engineered wood products. UBC faculty of forestry associate professor Harry Nelson says this escalation pushes B.C.’s forestry sector into uncharted territory, threatening not just sawmills but also pulp and secondary manufacturing. 

As British Columbia faces increasingly severe wildfire seasons, new research at UBC is revealing the hidden helpers at work underneath the ash. Assistant professor Dr. Monika Fischer studies pyrophilous fungi—fire-loving organisms that thrive in burned landscapes and may play a crucial role in helping forests recover. 

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