Speaker: Kelly Chibale, University of Cape Town

Time: 20:00 pm, August 26, 2022, GMT+8

Venue: iCANX Talks platform

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Abstract:

Translational medicine in the context of drug discovery is underpinned by both scientific and clinical insights.  It involves moving a project from the laboratory to the clinic and from the clinic back to the laboratory. This bi-directional approach serves the dual purpose of advancing both basic and clinical sciences.

On the other hand, a phenotypic whole cell screening approach to drug discovery can uncover cell permeable and active drug leads, which can be optimized for safety and efficacy as clinical candidates.  Clinical development of candidate drugs can in turn provide insights to guide the pre-clinical discovery of back-up or follow-on compounds.   Mechanism of action studies through target identification of clinical candidates derived from phenotypic whole cell screening can uncover novel clinically validated targets.

This talk will describe drug discovery process, underpinned by cell-based medicinal chemistry optimization, that led to the identification of a malaria clinical candidate and its back-up compound using insights gained from human clinical trials. Studies to determine the mechanism of action of the candidate compounds through target identification leading to a target-based drug discovery program will also be presented.

Biography:

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).

He has received several awards and honors, including being named by Fortune magazine as one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders in 2018. In 2021 Kelly 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 while in 2022 he was named as one of the 25 standout voices in African public health by Harvard University’s School of Public Health. He serves as an Associate Editor of the American Chemical Society (ACS)’s Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Source: iCANX