Research by University of Cape Town’s (UCT) paediatric neurosurgeon Professor Anthony Figaji – who has been awarded the Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship – has the potential to transform the global understanding and treatment of brain injury.
Professor Figaji was awarded the prestigious Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship for his pioneering research into childhood brain injury. His new groundbreaking research was recognised at an award ceremony on 15 July 2025.
The Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship is one of the most sought-after academic honours on the continent. Figaji and his research group, African Brain Child (ABC), based at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital (RCWMCH) and UCT’s Neuroscience Institute (NI), are striving to decode the physiology and improve treatment of brain injury in children.
This long-standing fellowship, which recognises established researchers, has previously been awarded to nine UCT academics. Professor Figaji becoming the tenth recipient makes UCT the institution with the most awardees. The 2024/2025 fellowships were awarded to both Figaji and the University of the Witwatersrand physicist, Professor Andrew Forbes.
Children are especially vulnerable to traumatic brain injury (TBI), which is the leading cause of death and disability from injury around the world. Figaji’s research explores how the brain responds to injury in real-time, what biological mechanisms contribute to recovery or further damage, and what treatment options are most effective.
Figaji seeks to understand how medications penetrate the brain, which, unlike other organs, is protected by physiological barriers that make drug delivery notoriously difficult.
Figaji’s project draws on a world-leading dataset, the largest of its kind, built over several years at RCWMCH. Using continuous monitoring of children with various forms of brain injury has enabled him to collect complex physiological and biochemical data directly from the brain, providing insights at a previously unattainable scale.
In analysing this data, he will focus on brain physiology, metabolism and inflammation, drug activity in the brain, and building research capacity in South Africa.
By examining the brain’s own chemistry, oxygenation levels, inflammation markers and real-time drug concentrations, the project aims to prevent ‘secondary brain injury’ – the damaging cascade of events that unfolds after the initial trauma.
“We’ve developed techniques to repeatedly sample both total and active drug levels directly from the brain,” says Figaji. “This will let us better predict what works, where and how – in a way that’s never been done before.”
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