PhD candidate takes research to MIT and Harvard
- Wits University
Bontle Masango focuses on type 2 diabetes, the most common type of diabetes in Africa, and hopes to reduce the impact on individuals and healthcare.
Masango, a 2025/2026 Fulbright Scholar, has begun her exchange at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States. This fellowship is awarded to students of exceptional academic merit and leadership who demonstrate potential to contribute to global knowledge and societal impact.
Over the next five months, Masango will be based at the Broad Institute, a world-leading centre for genomics and biomedical research, to advance her research into type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes represents one of the most serious challenges to public health in the 21st century and disproportionately affects underserved populations and emerging nations.
Masango , who is a PhD candidate in the School of Clinical Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits, is researching small differences in a person’s body, e.g. their DNA, and their lifestyle, to try and identify early warning signs of diabetes.
“The purpose of my research is to find better ways to predict who is likely to develop type 2 diabetes before serious damage happens. Many people only find out they have type 2 diabetes when it has already started causing complications,” she says.
Her PhD builds on her master’s research in genomic medicine.
“For my dissertation, I studied how blood sugar levels change in South African adults after they eat. This is important because the way a person’s body responds to sugar can tell us a lot about their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. I also looked at whether these blood sugar changes are linked to other things happening in the body, such as hormones and liver health.”
Dealing with the abnormal
She further explains that type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes in Africa.
“Because it is so common, we think of it as ‘normal’, but what many people do not realise is that diabetes increases your risk of having serious health complications like heart problems, kidney disease, eye conditions causing blindness, and foot issues that might lead to amputations. It is also alarming that more than 50% of people with type 2 diabetes in Africa do not know that they have it.”
Of further concern is that African healthcare systems use tools and guidelines built on European populations, which often perform poorly for African people.
Masango wants to contribute solutions that fit “our [African] biology, lifestyle, and environment so that we can detect type 2 diabetes early, save lives, and reduce complications.”
“My research will be a stepping stone towards helping healthcare providers identify high-risk individuals earlier and provide people with information to make lifestyle changes sooner to delay the onset of the disease. I hope that my research and findings will someday reduce the burden of disease and put less strain on our healthcare systems.
Masango will undertake advanced training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and collaborate with leading researchers in genomics and biomedical science, while strengthening research that benefits African populations and helps address critical gaps in precision medicine for underrepresented populations.
The Broad Institute is organised to encourage cross-disciplinary and collaborative research that cannot be done in a traditional, single-laboratory setting.
According to its mission statement: “We tackle big scientific questions that no single lab can address alone. We empower cross-disciplinary teams to solve the most important challenges in biomedicine. We invent and openly share cutting-edge technologies and tools to accelerate research and catalyze improvements in human health throughout the United States and beyond.”