Turning points for sustainability transitions: Institutional destabilization, public finance and the techno-economic dynamics of decarbonization in South Africa.

Existing socio-technical systems tend to be intransigent to change. Decarbonisation, on the other hand, is an imperative, leading to an obvious conflict between the need for, and highly effective resistance to, change. Moreover, the abandonment of fossil fuel-based technologies in favour of more sustainable alternatives will require substantial reallocation of government's operational expenditure, particularly in countries like South Africa with high per capita greenhouse gas emissions and low per capita income.

An evaluation of South Africa's public-private partnership for the localisation of vaccine research, manufacture and distribution.

Background: Public-private partnerships (PPPs), widely used as a means of leveraging the skills, expertise and resources of the private sector to mutual advantage, were similarly adopted by South Africa to support public sector delivery. This study has evaluated one such partnership, namely the Biovac Institute, which was established in 2003 to cover vaccine research and development, manufacturing, and supply. The initiative was highly unusual given that it attempted to combine all three aspects in a single PPP.

Techno-economic analysis of horseradish peroxidase production using a transient expression system in Nicotiana benthamiana.

Despite the advantages of plant-based transient expression systems relative to microbial or mammalian cell systems, the commercial production of recombinant proteins using plants has not yet been achieved to any significant extent. One of the challenges has been the lack of published data on the costs of manufacture for products other than biopharmaceuticals. In this study, we report on the techno-economic analysis of the production of a standard commercial enzyme, namely, horseradish peroxidase (HRP), using a transient expression system in Nicotiana benthamiana.

Determining quantitative targets for public funding of tuberculosis research and development.

South Africa's expenditure on tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D) is insignificant relative to both its disease burden and the expenditure of some comparator countries with a minimal TB incidence. In 2010, the country had the second highest TB incidence rate in the world (796 per 100,000 population), and the third highest number of new TB cases (490,000 or 6% of the global total). Although it has a large TB treatment program (about $588 million per year), TB R&D funding is small both in absolute terms and relative to its total R&D expenditure.