
Having grown up in the villages and townships of Zambia, Professor Kelly Chibale became well acquainted with the ravages of malaria at a young age. Now, inspired by a deep spirituality and a love of chemistry, his invaluable contribution to the ongoing battle against this disease – among others – has been awarded an A rating by the National Research Foundation.

MedChemNet and Infectious Diseases Hub were absolutely delighted to attend the first two days of the recent 19th RSC / SCI Medicinal Chemistry Symposium – Europe’s premier biennial Medicinal Chemistry event – focusing on first disclosures of significant new therapeutic agents across all disease areas and new strategies in medicinal chemistry.

Kelly Chibale, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cape Town University in South Africa, talks about his drug discovery work and coming up with compounds that might have an impact on malaria control and elimination

This week, we were fortunate to catch up with Professor Kelly Chibale, Principal Investigator at the University of Cape Town, founder of Africa’s first drug discovery and development centre, H3D, and one of the speakers at our #ScienceAfrica UnConference this year. Professor Chibale spoke eloquently about his efforts to create novel medicines to combat the major diseases in Africa as well as his concerted advocacy for greater investment in hard scientific infrastructure.

The University of Pretoria (UP) will host its first Community of Practice (CoP) focusing specifically on Malaria Elimination in the UP Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP ISMC). This NRF initiative endeavours to provide ‘vehicles to enable the implementation of integrated trans-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary solutions to address societal challenges and to ultimately bring change to the lives of South Africans.

Postdoctoral research fellow Dr Mathew Njoroge at UCT’s Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D) recently returned from the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany. The annual scientific conferences have been held in Lindau since 1951, bringing together Nobel laureates and young scientists to foster scientific exchanges between different generations and cultures.

There is a great need to fund talented African scientists — based in Africa — to succeed, rather than just survive, by providing world-class infrastructure. The continent is also facing a lack of scientific entrepreneurship and poorly developed scientific networks between different groups.

Researcher Professor Kelly Chibale has called for a deep commitment to investing in world-class infrastructure and skills for scientists to succeed on the continent.

Leading African researcher Professor Kelly Chibale has called for a deep commitment to investing in world-class infrastructure and skills to enable scientists to succeed on the continent..

Production of drugs in SA instead of outsourcing to countries such as India would dent high unemployment.
Public-private partnerships in the pharmaceutical sector are vital for accelerating job creation and infrastructure development in SA, says malaria researcher Kelly Chibale.

An exciting new antimalarial drug candidate is active across the entire parasite life cycle and holds great promise as a single-dose cure.
A new paper published today in the prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine describes the discovery and biological profiling of an exciting new antimalarial clinical drug candidate. MMV390048 is effective against resistant strains of the malaria parasite and across the entire parasite life cycle, and it has the potential to cure and protect in a single dose.

A new paper published today in the prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine describes the discovery and biological profiling of an exciting new anti-malarial clinical drug candidate, MMV390048, effective against resistant strains of the malaria parasite, and across the entire parasite lifecycle, with the potential to cure and protect in a single dose. The research was conducted by the University of Cape Town (UCT)'s Drug Discovery and Development Centre, H3D, and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), in collaboration with a team of international researchers.