Traditional medicines as a mechanism for driving research innovation in Africa

The outcomes from recent high profile deliberations concerning African health research and economic development all point towards the need for a mechanism to support health innovation on the continent. The mission of the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI), is to promote and sustain African-led health product innovation to address African public health needs through the assembly of research networks, and building of capacity to support human and economic development. ANDI is widely viewed as the vehicle to implementing some of these recommendations. There is tremendous opportunity for Africa, to leverage the expertise in natural products and traditional medicines in support of this objective to kick-start innovation. This report highlights key recommendations that have emerged through expert forums convened by ANDI on the challenges, opportunities and prospects for investing in this important area of research

Developing ANDI: A Novel Approach to Health Product R&D in Africa

Solomon Nwaka and colleagues discuss ANDI, the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation, which is intended to help stimulate health research and development on the African continent

Advancing Drug Innovation for Neglected Diseases—Criteria for Lead Progression

The current drug R&D pipeline for most neglected diseases remains weak, and unlikely to support registration of novel drug classes that meet desired target product profiles in the short term. This calls for sustained investment as well as greater emphasis in the risky upstream drug discovery. Access to technologies, resources, and strong management as well as clear compound progression criteria are factors in the successful implementation of any collaborative drug discovery effort. We discuss how some of these factors have impacted drug discovery for tropical diseases within the past four decades, and highlight new opportunities and challenges through the virtual North–South drug discovery network as well as the rationale for greater participation of institutions in developing countries in product innovation. A set of criteria designed to facilitate compound progression from screening hits to drug candidate selection is presented to guide ongoing efforts

Integrated dataset of screening hits against multiple neglected disease pathogens.

New chemical entities are desperately needed that overcome the limitations of existing drugs for neglected diseases. Screening a diverse library of 10,000 drug-like compounds against 7 neglected disease pathogens resulted in an integrated dataset of 744 hits. We discuss the prioritization of these hits for each pathogen and the strong correlation observed between compounds active against more than two pathogens and mammalian cell toxicity. Our work suggests that the efficiency of early drug discovery for neglected diseases can be enhanced through a collaborative, multi-pathogen approach

Drugs and diagnostic innovations to improve global health.

Infectious diseases remain the major cause of morbidity and mortality in the developing world. Affordable effective drugs and diagnostics are critical for patient management and disease control but the development of new drugs and diagnostics is too slow to keep up with the emergence and spread of infectious diseases around the world. Innovative collaborative research and development involving disease endemic countries and developed countries are urgently needed to accelerate progress along the path from discovery to product adoption. These emerging approaches and the need for increased investment in human and financial resources to support them are discussed