Chinedum Peace Babalola is the first female Pharmacist Professor of the University of Ibadan, holds a B. Pharm. (1983) and a Ph.D. (1997) from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and is the first female Pharmacist in Nigeria to be decorated with the Fellow of the Academy of Science. For over 25 years, she has focused on pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD), drug analysis, pharmacogenetics and bioethics as tools to study the disposition of several antimalarials and antiinfectives in Nigerians as a guide to optimizing therapy in Blacks. She has developed novel methods for analyzing several drugs including quinine, pyronaridine, proguanil, halofantrine, lumefantrine, artemisinine and penicillin derivatives in biological fluids contributing in the elucidation of their PK/PD. Her development of a novel HPLC method for analyzing quinine (recognized by WHO) in bio-matrices is a feat, as the method resolves quinine from its optical isomer quinidine, leading to elucidation of its pharmacokinetics in Africans by her and others, thus forming the basis of dose optimization in malaria patients. Her ongoing formulation of quinine suppositories is a novel achievement that shows potential for therapy. Her studies on drug interactions reveal that bioavailability and bacterial activity of some antibiotics are markedly reduced (>50%) when combined with some antimalarials, calling for dosage adjustment. She and co-authors reported the first pharmacogenetic study in Nigerians (healthy and sickle cell patients) with proguanil as probe drug and observed that some Nigerians are poor metabolizers and carry mutant CYP2C19 genes. She is concluding a similar study on NATs in healthy and HIV/AIDs Nigerians. She recently won a MacArthur grant ($1 million) to set up a Centre for Drug Discovery, Development and Production and is a Co-Principal Investigator for NIH/Forgaty D43 grant ($1.2 million) focused on interdisciplinary training of African clinical/biomedical researchers. She has over 130 publications in reputable journals, books and conference proceedings.
