UB-CeDD Mission

To serve as a platform and catalyst for the discovery of new drugs in Africa led by Africans.

Our Vision: To become a state-of-the-art drug discovery center for the Central African region that utilizes natural products from across the continent to identify new drugs suitable for resource-limited regions. 

Our Labs

We currently run five labs. We are willing to partner with you to expand our horizon.

Welcome to UB-CeDD

WHAT WE DO

Founded in 2022, UB-CeDD is a community of medicinal chemists, AI/ML experts, microbiologists, biochemists, natural product experts and plant taxonomists whose quest is to discover new therapies for diseases that primarily affect Africans and are based on naturally occurring compounds from African medicinal plants and other African sources. The research center is being set up with seed funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship awarded in 2021 to Fidele Ntie-Kang, the vision bearer of the center.

If lions allowed their untold exploits to be recounted by the hunters, the history books would only contain one-sided records.

— an African proverb.

I think this is a great progress for my alma mater. More good things will come to Cameroon.

Niba Clinton Ambe 

(UB alumnus and Burdett Nursing Scholar, Assistant Dean of Studies, Hope University Institute Limbe, Cameroon)

Congratulations, Fidele - and all the best for your future science and research.

Andreas Bender 

(Professor of Chemoinformatics, Cambridge University, UK and Chief Informatics and Technology Officer at Pangea Botanica, Cambridge, UK)

A drug discovery center in Cameroon is not only timely, but ought to have come to existence much earlier than now. We cannot keep depending on drugs discovered by others.

Simon M. N. Efange

(Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Buea, Cameroon)

Thank you for the unprecedented collaboration initiative in Africa. More grace!

Samuel A. Egieyeh 

(Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Bioinformatics, University of the Western Cape, South Africa)

That's an exciting project .... Can really make a difference long-term in Cameroon, I imagine ...

Marnix H. Medema 

(Professor of Bioinformatics, Wageningen University, the Netherlands)

Congratulations Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang for all the achievements. All the best with the Center for Drug Discovery. It will be a success.

Jose L. Medina-Franco 

(Full Professor, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico)

Great Achievement Prof. Fidèle Ntie-Kang. Congratulations for putting in place an African Excellence center for new drug discovery and innovation. We will all, as African scientists, join your initiative. All my best wishes.

Celestin Nzanzu Mudogo  

(Associate Professor, School of Medicine, University of Kinshasa, DR Congo)

This collaboration gives us the unique chance to share our research and education expertise with researchers and students that might otherwise not get a chance to work with us...

Ian Tietjen 

(Research Assistant Professor, the Wistar Institute, USA)

It is a real pleasure to be able to help in some way to increase the research capacity of outstanding Cameroonian researchers.

Matthew Todd 

(Professor and Chair of Drug Discovery, University College London, UK)

Wish you all the best for the Center.

Wolfgang Sippl 

(Professor and Chair of Medicinal Chemistry, Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)

Our Services

We basically offer three kinds of services

Research in Drug Discovery
Main Focus on Anti-infective Agents

Our projects range from infectious disease areas to non-communicable diseases. Our approach includes the identification of suitable drug targets for these diseases and/or a suitably acting small molecules. We then use a panel of in silico (computer-based) approaches and in vitro validation methods to find lead compounds, optimize them and develop them as clinical candidates.

Training in Drug Discovery
MSc, PhD, Internships, Workshops, …

We currently supervise internships and thesis projects in five drug discovery areas:

  • Computer-aided drug design.
  • Synthesis of new chemical entities.
  • Identification of modes of action of new and known natural products.
  • Testing of new compound activities.
  • Determination of metabolic stability of drug leads.
Contracts/Consultancies/Partnerships
Diverse Areas

You might want to partner with us to develop new ideas or explore existing ideas. We have experience handling outsourced big data and we have a team of dedicated staff who are willing to explore new ideas and switch roles. We want to explore new drug targets, new small lead compounds, unexplored plant species, develop new computer modeling approaches, as well as synthetic chemistry and chemical library generation and develop new partnerships.