Deadline: 18 July 2018
The Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science is seeking proposals in the form of Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) for “Drug Discovery” which is a critical prerequisite for success in drug development and remains a highly neglected area for the African continent.
This call is a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and the University of Cape Town (UCT) Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D).
The lack of market incentives has biased drug discovery efforts globally away from diseases most prevalent in the developing world. Collaborative efforts of multidisciplinary teams in drug discovery and other fields shows that success and efficiency increases significantly when individual contributors combine their complementary capabilities.
Program Goal
- To support exciting new drug discovery projects in Africa.
- A secondary objective is to strengthen drug discovery capabilities in Africa and create a project-driven virtual African drug discovery network.
Funding Information
Each project has a term of 24 months beginning from the project start date and the amount awarded is up to USD $100,000. They expect to fund 8 projects.
Eligibility Criteria
What they are looking to accomplish:
- Identify new chemical entities (NCEs) with potential for drug development in diseases of local relevance for Africa, starting with hits for subsequent hit-to-lead and lead optimization campaigns.
- Expand research capacity for drug discovery within qualifying institutions.
- Strengthen the drug discovery network by building intra-Africa and global links including those identified as having basic and translational science capacities.
- To be eligible, applicants must:
- Have a creative idea for a drug discovery project based on one or more of the following:
- biological targets
- biological screens or assays
- small molecule starting points (hits or leads including purified and characterized natural products)
- in-vitro and in vivo DMPK | ADME assays and related technologies
- Work in drug discovery on the African continent
- Be willing, interested, and able to collaborate with expertise across the continent to share and develop best practices and approaches for drug discovery
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted electronically via given website.
For more information, please visit AASA.