African innovators discovering new drugs for diseases endemic to Africa

Friday, September 20, 2019

“Diseases considered to be of the poor face a market bias that has hampered the discovery of drugs to treat them. The African Academy of Sciences (The AAS), and her partners; the University of Cape Town Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D); Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are transforming the treatment landscape on the continent to ensure more Africans have improved access to effective and cheaper drugs and can lead healthier and happier lives,” says Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) Programme Manager Dr Moses Alobo.

Africa represents 17% of the world’s population but bears a disproportionate 25% of the global disease burden. Sub-Saharan Africa carries 90% of the global cases of malaria. In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) data revealed that the 2.5M who fell ill with TB in Africa represented a quarter of new TB cases in the world. WHO also reports more than 90% of new cases of leishmaniasis - a devastating parasitic disease which can lead to disfiguration of the spleen and liver or death in its most severe forms - occurred in 7 countries, five of which were African: Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

GC Africa, through the partnership with H3D, MMV and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is providing grants totaling $1M to innovative research projects advancing the discovery of new drugs to prevent, treat, and cure diseasesRead more ... endemic to Africa

The eight innovators, who are the inaugural awardees of the GC Africa drug discovery scheme, were selected from 53 applicants from 13 African countries. GC Africa is implemented through The AAS and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) funding, agenda-setting and programme management platform, and the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA).

The innovators, half of whom are women, will each receive up to $100,000 for a period of two years to expand their institutions' drug discovery research capacity. The funding will also enable the researchers to identify new chemical entities with potential for drug development in malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis, Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT, commonly known as sleeping sickness) and enteroaggregative Escherichia coli, a bacteria associated with chronic and acute diarrhoea and childhood stunting.