A Training on Bridging Chemistry and Biology in Drug Discovery and Development
Busitema University Natural products Research and Innovations Centre (NaPRIC), in conjunction with Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubingen, UC Riverside, Kabale University and Functional Metabolics Lab, organised a three-day training aimed at equipping individuals with applicable knowledge and skills on how to bridge Chemistry and Biology in Drug discovery and development. The training, conducted from April 2nd to April 5th, 2024, targets PHD students, master’s students and early career researchers with backgrounds in Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Biophysics, Structural Biology and Pharmacology. Additionally, other individuals interested in learning about exciting approaches to drug discovery and development are warmly welcome. The NaPRIC team has packaged a range of carefully designed topics that are appropriate to portray drug discovery and development to the trainees. These topics include, Fundamentals of mass spectrometry and Introduction to metabolomics in natural product drug discovery. The topics were further broken down into subtopics which the trainers will unearth in the course of the training.
According to the Natural Products Research and Innovation Centre (NAPRIC) at Busitema University, Africa and Uganda in particular, have been hotspots for several infectious tropical diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Ebola and many more leading to high mortality and morbidity rates and imposing a heavy economic burden. Moreover, the available drugs are inadequate for the majority of these diseases, exacerbating the situation. The NaPRIC team further emphasizes the urgent need for new treatments, yet the pace of drug discovery and development (3Ds) is hindered due to the influx of new diseases.
Against this backdrop, the Natural Products Research and Innovations Centre at Busitema University is positioning itself as a hub for drug discovery and development to address the inadequacies. They organized a one week training workshop to introduce participants to key concepts of drug discovery and development with hands-on sessions.
