Invited Speaker

Discovering Drugs in Africa by Africans: Challenges and Opportunities
Kelly Chibale
South Africa

Infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS are the major causes of death in the developing world. These diseases mainly affect sub-Saharan African people who remain among the poorest in the world even though the region has abundant human resources and is rich in natural resources. It is vital for African scientists to enhance the drug discovery and development capability of the continent to address its health needs. Despite a rich history of traditional medicinal use in Africa by Africans, the continent remains the worst affected in terms of high disease burden. Reasons for this are varied and range from a lack of effective coordination of continental efforts along the drug discovery and development value chain to a lack of capacity and competency in several key areas.

In order for diseases that primarily affect the African population to receive worldwide scientific attention, African researchers must take a more active role in modern drug discovery approaches. African scientists working in the area of drug discovery, to a large extent, must adopt pharmaceutical industry approaches to drug discovery through lead identification and optimization in typical hit to lead (H2L) and Lead Optimization (LO) campaigns. Increasingly integration of in silico, in vitro and in vivo drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) studies in the discovery and development of new chemical entities (NCE) has become a feature of medicinal chemistry programs in the pharmaceutical industry and some academic and related institutions. While African scientists do not have the luxury of access to large synthetic chemical libraries and other sophisticated technological platforms due, amongst other things, to limited financial and infrastructure resources, they have a powerful resource in uniquely endemic natural products and/or general biodiversity, which are yet to be exploited for health and economic benefits.

This lecture will highlight some of the challenges inherent in modern approaches to drug discovery in Africa as it relates to hit discovery, H2L and LO. A recently initiated project aimed at integrating African biodiversity and/or natural products into modern paradigms of drug discovery will be presented as an example of an opportunity.