Therapeutics/Drugs

Sibao Wang of the Institute for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Duoquan Wang from the China CDC together with their international partners Abdoulaye Diabaté of Institut de Recherche en Sciences de La Santé in Burkina Faso and Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will develop procedures to efficiently introduce a specific bacterium into field mosquitoes in order to evaluate effectiveness of the bacterium spread through mosquito populations and to block parasite transmission in a more realistic setting.

Fidele Ntie-Kang, a computational chemist at the Department of Chemistry, University of Buea in Cameroon, will establish a state-of-the-art drug discovery regional center for Central Africa that utilizes natural products from across the continent to identify new antiviral drugs suitable for resource-limited regions. Dr. Ntie-Kang is a pioneer in harnessing the diverse African flora for drug discovery purposes. His research group is building an online natural products database, which contains compounds isolated from plants, fungi, corals and bacterial species growing in Africa.

Gabriel Mashabela of the South African Medical Research Council will develop novel tuberculosis drugs derived from South African medicinal plants by utilizing CRISPR genome editing technology to produce Mycobacterium deficient in essential metabolic enzymes that can be used to screen natural products. Although the majority of approved drugs are of natural origin, most drug-screening approaches use synthetic libraries, which lack diversity. However, natural products contain very low concentrations of bioactive compounds making them difficult to use in traditional drug screens.

Erick Strauss of Stellenbosch University in South Africa will develop a small molecule inhibitor of an enzyme that helps pathogenic bacteria evade the host immune system and potentially become resistant to antibiotics as a novel treatment for methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), which is a major public health concern. They discovered a bacterial enzyme, MerA, that neutralizes an anti-microbial compound secreted by immune cells. This prolongs the survival of the bacteria in the host, giving them time to develop mutations that could render them less susceptible to antibiotics.

Fortunate Mokoena of North West University in South Africa will couple molecular docking approaches with in vitro and in vivo validation to identify novel inhibitors of Trypanosoma brucei and Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agents of the lethal diseases, African trypanosomiasis and malaria, respectively. Current drugs targeting these pathogens have limited efficacy due to the development of resistance and can cause severe side effects.

Grace Mugumbate of Chinhoyi University of Technology in Zimbabwe will develop new anti-malarial drugs by using a chemogenomics approach for ligand-based and structure-based virtual screening to identify compounds that selectively bind to heat shock proteins of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. P. falciparum heat shock proteins are essential for parasite growth and survival, and represent a valuable new target for developing safe and effective anti-malarials.

Elizabeth Kigondu of the Kenya Medical Research Institute will identify natural products that block the resistance mechanism developed by tuberculosis-causing bacteria against existing anti-mycobacterial drugs to help more effectively treat tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB) is a highly prevalent and severe disease that has been exacerbated by the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB for which only limited treatments are available. Efflux pumps play a critical role in mycobacterial resistance to two drugs, spectinomycin and rifampicin.

Lyn-Marie Birkholtz of the University of Pretoria in South Africa will identify gametocytocidal

We propose to investigate the feasibility of a needle-free method of administration for the antibiotic gentamicin via the rectal route. Under this project we would conduct laboratory release studies, preclinical rectal bioavailability studies and stakeholder interviews to assess the feasibility of novel concept. This delivery method would improve access to outpatient treatment of neonatal sepsis in areas serviced by low level healthcare providers and would remove the inherent risks associated with parenteral delivery.

Stephan Sieber of the Technical University of Munich in Germany will work together with Véronique Dartois of Hackensack Meridian Health in the U.S. to test whether his new antibiotic, which uniquely activates, as well as inactivates, molecular pathways to destroy certain pathogenic bacteria, can be adapted to kill the related Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which causes tuberculosis. Current antibiotic treatments are lengthy, and it remains difficult to completely destroy all the bacteria in the body.