Medicinal Chemistry Out of Africa

Drug discovery in Africa tackles zoonotic and related infections

Zoonotic and related infections pose an enormous health threat to the world's second-most populous continent. Despite the challenges faced by drug discovery scientists in Africa, recent progress toward identifying potential medicines across diverse disease areas is a cause for optimism and an indicator of progress in African-led scientific initiatives.

COVID-19 vaccine equity in Africa

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dominated global health discourse since early 2020. By early 2021, the unprecedented speed of vaccine development against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by government, academia and industry contributed biotechnological tools to reduce severe COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths. However, vaccine distribution has not been equitable. We address one element of this challenge, namely the low COVID-19 vaccination rates in African countries, which lag behind higher-income nations. We evaluate key obstacles to initiatives addressing this inequity and emphasize Africa-based research and development as a sustainable solution to ensuring vaccine equity in Africa.

Biological and Medicinal Chemistry in Africa

The young, fast-growing population of Africa means that harnessing the economic benefits of scientific research is critical to sustained and equitable growth in the continent. Moreover, the whole world would benefit from the added intellectual contribution that would come from nurturing African science. The high burden of neglected diseases in Africa makes chemical biology a particularly important field. In this editorial, the reconvergence of science conducted at the interface of chemistry and biology is placed in the context of African participation, its importance to global science and the unique blend of supporting and hindering factors that influence African scientific contributions. The new Biological and Medicinal Chemistry in Africa special collection showcases a broad spectrum of African chemical biology.

Examining African contributions to global health: Reflections on knowledge circulation and innovation

This article unites different disciplinary debates on 'southern innovation', 'theory from the South', and 'decolonisation of knowledge' in order to discuss existing understandings around the role of Africa in the production of health-related knowledge, public health policy, and medical innovation. Arguing that high-income countries have much to learn from the global South when it comes to health-related knowledge and practices, we propose an interdisciplinary research approach to uncovering and examining African contributions to global health, drawing on an ongoing collaborative project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We present four empirical case studies concerning drug development, healthcare systems, and urban planning to critically enquire into both historical and contemporary transcontinental knowledge circulation and learning potentials, as much as cases of forgetting and silencing. On this basis, we argue that 'learning from the South' must mean more than transplanting quick and cheap technological fixes to serve societies in the global North, but rather recognising the vast contributions that Africans have made to global epistemologies, without losing sight of the asymmetries inherent in South-North knowledge exchanges. Lessons learned might apply to fields other than those discussed here and go far beyond 'reverse innovation'.

Drug discovery research in Ghana, challenges, current efforts, and the way forward

We have a long-term vision to develop drug discovery research capacity within Ghana, to tackle unmet medical needs in Ghana and the wider West African region. However, there are several issues and challenges that need to be overcome to enable this vision, including training, human resource, equipment, infrastructure, procurement, and logistics. We discuss these challenges from the context of Ghana in this review. An important development is the universities and research centres within Ghana working together to address some of these challenges. Therefore, while there is a long way to go to fully accomplish our vision, there are encouraging signs.

Innovation Experiences from Africa-Led Drug Discovery at the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre

As the so-called “next frontier” in global economic terms, Africa’s disease burden continues to choke and cripple economic growth across the continent. The highest burden is attributable to malaria and tuberculosis (TB), which also remain among the deadliest infectious diseases affecting mankind the world over (Malaria, 627,000 deaths; TB, 1.5 million deaths, in 2020). In achieving self-determination with respect to the health needs of all who live on the continent, Africa must align with global north efforts and be a source of health innovation. This will in part require the creation of an ecosystem of innovative pharmaceutical R&D and expanding it across the continent by scaling up through sustained performance and excellence. To this end, the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre at University of Cape Town in South Africa has risen to this challenge. Here, we highlight the innovation experiences gained at H3D, covering the advances made in our quest to contribute to a global pipeline of therapeutic interventions against malaria and TB. We discuss selected chemical series starting from their identification, structure–activity relationships, mode of action, safety, proof-of-concept studies, and lessons learned.