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Fostering drug discovery and development in Africa

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The H3D Centre is a South African-based academic translational research unit that has had many successes and could provide a much-needed model for drug discovery and development in Africa.

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Fig. 1: Pipeline of infectious disease drug discovery.
Fig. 2: Key partnerships for drug discovery at the H3D Centre.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the University of Cape Town, the South African government (Department of Science and Innovation, Technology Innovation Agency, South African Medical Research Council, Department of Trade and Industry), Wolfson Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation, Novartis, Medicines for Malaria Venture, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck KGaA, Celgene, Royal Society, Global Challenges Research Fund, Newton Fund, Merck & Co Inc., US National Institutes of Health, Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), and Neville Isdell.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

    Susan Winks, John G. Woodland & Kelly Chibale

  2. Division of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Cape Town, Observatory, South Africa

    Goonaseelan ‘Colin’ Pillai

  3. CP+ Associates GmbH, Basel, Switzerland

    Goonaseelan ‘Colin’ Pillai

  4. South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery and Development Research Unit, Department of Chemistry and Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Kelly Chibale

Authors
  1. Susan Winks
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  2. John G. Woodland
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  3. Goonaseelan ‘Colin’ Pillai
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  4. Kelly Chibale
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Contributions

K.C. designed the content and flow of the paper. S.W. and J.G.W. collected the necessary information and data. S.W., J.G.W., G.C.P. and K.C. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kelly Chibale.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Winks, S., Woodland, J.G., Pillai, G.‘. et al. Fostering drug discovery and development in Africa. Nat Med 28, 1523–1526 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01885-1

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