Advancing innovative medicines discovery in Africa
Advancing innovative medicines discovery in Africa
With
Mr. Kelly Chibale
Chairman and CEO of the H3D Foundation in South Africa
Health innovation is happening in Africa, but there is a greater need for capacity strengthening incentives for innovation and skills development to support drug discovery and development on the continent.
In this regard, partnerships with established R&D biopharmaceutical companies will be key to co-create the innovation ecosystem needed to catalyze new funds and seed a thriving health innovation environment.
About Kelly Chibale
Kelly Chibale is a full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development. He is also a Full Member of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease & Molecular Medicine, a Tier 1 South Africa Research Chair in Drug Discovery, founding Director of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Drug Discovery & Development Research Unit at UCT, the Founder and Director of the UCT Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D) and the Chairman and CEO of the H3D Foundation.
Kelly obtained his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge in the UK (1989-1992). This was followed by postdoctoral stints at the University of Liverpool in the UK (1992-94) and at the Scripps Research Institute in the USA (1994-96). He was a Sandler Sabbatical Fellow at the University of California San Francisco (2002), a US Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (2008) and a Visiting Professor at Pfizer in the UK (2008).
Kelly was named by Fortune magazine as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2018 and by New African magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Africans in 2019. In 2021 he was named as one of the 22 black biotech leaders in honour of Juneteenth in the USA on a list published by the Timmerman Report, which celebrates innovative black leaders who are change-makers in their respective fields. He was recently named (May 2022) as one of the 25 standout voices in African public health by Harvard University’s Public Health magazine.
His research is in global health infectious disease drug discovery against malaria, tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance.
About H3D
H3D is Africa’s first integrated drug discovery and development centre. The Centre was founded at the University of Cape Town in April 2010 and pioneers world-class drug discovery in Africa. Its mission is to discover and develop innovative, lifesaving medicines for communicable diseases that predominantly affect African patients, build Africa-specific models to contribute to improving treatment outcomes in African patients, as well as educate African scientists in drug discovery-related sciences.