African Natural Products Database (ANPDB)

The update of data is ongoing. ANPDB summarizes all our past projects on natural product libraries from African sources, including AfroDb, p-ANAPL, NANPDB, EANPDB, AfroCancer, AfroMalariaDB, Afrotryp, etc. The link to the online database is available here.

AvH Research Group Linkage

Discovery of anti-HIV pseudo-natural products with latency reversal properties, is an ongoing project in partnership with Prof. Wolfgang Sippl, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). It is a Research Group Linkage Project, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

 

Nature-inspired Discovery of Novel Antivirals (NiDNA)

The NiDNA project is currently being funded as a Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship awarded to the PI, in partnership with Ersilia (UK) and the Wistar Institute (USA), by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The funding information is published here.

 

African-derived Natural Products Box (AdNPB)

In collaboration with Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), we are preparing a collection of diverse natural compounds from African medicinal plants for screening in diverse assays. This project is being jointly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and LifeArc

News!!!

2023:

 

November: Kick-off of the African-derived Natural Products Box (AdNPB) project in collaboration with Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV).

 

October: Dr. Ntie-Kang attends the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Dakar, Senegal.

 

September: UB-CeDD hosts an international hybrid drug discovery workshop on the theme “Artificial Intelligence, Computational and Medicinal Chemistry-based Approaches for Antiviral Drug Discovery”.

 

September: UB-CeDD to host in-house staff training the Biomedical Technician Training (BTT) course offered by the Wistar Institute (USA) and a hands-on training on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for drug discovery offered by Ersilia Open Science Initiative (UK).

 

June: Dr. Maloba M. M. Lobe is awarded the African Postdoctoral Training Initiative (APTI) fellowship by the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) at the Fogarty International Center at NIH (USA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

May: Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang is attending a meeting with other Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship awardees at the Headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle (USA).

 

April: Dr. Boris Davy Bekono is recruited at the University of Yaoundé I as an Assistant Lecturer.

 

March: Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang is attending a leadership workshop organized by the African Leadership Institute at Mont Fleur, Stellenbosch (South Africa), along with other Calestous Juma fellows.

 

March: Dr. Smith B. Babiaka wins the best poster award during the American Chemical Society (ACS) Symposium in Bonn (Germany).

 

February: Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang is attending the Grand Challenges Africa Drug Discovery Cohorts meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

January: UB-CeDD website is now available at https://www.ub-cedd.org  (URL: http://ubcedd.website3.me).

 

January: Alexander von Humboldt Research Group Linkage Project with Martin-Luther University takes off (55,000 EUR).

 

2022:

December: The application for the creation of UB-CeDD is endorsed by the Council of the University of Buea.

 

December: Dr. Maloba M. M. Lobe was recruited Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry, University of Buea.

 

September: Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang is an invited speaker and receives an award from Afe-Babalola University Ado-Ekiti (Nigeria), during the Drug Discovery Africa 2022 conference, for his contributions towards drug discovery in Africa.

 

September: Dr. Conrad V. Simoben and Mr. Cyril T. Namba-Nzanguim receive travel grants to present their results during the Drug Discovery Africa 2022 conference in Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.

 

August: Ms. Chantal Emade Nkwelle, Dr. Donatus B. Eni and Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang are appointed as J1 Guest Scholars at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia (USA).

 

July: Working visit of Dr. Miquel Duran-Frigola and Dr. Gemma Turon from Ersilia Open Science Initiative, Cambridge (UK) to plan scientific events for the collaboration involved in the NiDNA project.

 

May: Dr. Conrad V. Simoben is selected to participate in the conference with Nobel Laureats at Lindau, Germany.

 

April: Working visit of Dr. Ian Tietjen from the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, Philadelphia (USA) to plan scientific events for the collaboration involved in the NiDNA project.

 

March: Construction work begins at the site allocated to UB-CeDD. Dr. Ntie-Kang is co-organizer of the online workshop “Computational Applications in Secondary Metabolite Discovery (CaiSMD)

 

2021: 

October: Dr. Smith B. Babiaka is awarded the Georg Forster Postdoctoral Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in addition to a 10,000 EUR grant by the Bayer Foundation to pursue his research on marine natural products from species harvested off the coast of Limbe, South West Region, Cameroon.

 

Ooctober: Dr. Fidele Ntie-Kang is awarded the Calestous Juma Science Leadership Fellowship (1 Million US Dollars) by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Selected Publications

OUR RESEARCH OUTPUTS

2024

  1. Shu VA, Eni DB, Ntie-Kang F. (2024) A survey of isatin hybrids and their biological properties. Mol Divers . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11030-024-10883-z
  2. Eni DB, Cassel J, Namba-Nzanguim CT, Simoben CV,  Tietjen I,  Akunuri R,  Salvino JM, Ntie-Kang F.(2024) Design, synthesis, and biochemical and computational screening of novel oxindole derivatives as inhibitors of Aurora A kinase and SARS-CoV-2 spike/host ACE2 interaction. Med Chem Res 33, 620–634 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00044-024-03201-7.
  3. Ntie-Kang F, Eni DB, Telukunta KK, Osamor VC, Egieyeh SA, Duran-Frigola M, Mishra P, Shadrack DM, Paul L, Musyoka TM, Blin K, Farid MM, Chen Y, Djogang LK, Betow JY, Ibezim A, Joshi D, Edwin AT, Chama MA, Ongagna JM, Kemdoum S, Pierre V, Metuge JA, Bekono BD, Isa MA, Medina-Franco José L, Weber T, Dorrestein PC, Janezic DB, Özlem T, Ludwig-Müller J. (2024) The workshops on computational applications in secondary metabolite discovery (CAiSMD). Physical Sciences Reviews, . https://doi.org/10.1515/psr-2024-0015.

2023

  1. Singla RK, De R, Efferth T, Mezzetti B, Sahab Uddin M, Sanusi, Ntie-Kang F, Wang D, Schultz F, Kharat KR, Devkota HP, Battino M, Sur D, Lordan R, Patnaik SS, Tsagkaris C, Sai CS, Tripathi SK, Găman MA, Ahmed MEO, González-Burgos E, Babiaka SB, …, Atanasov AG, Shen B. (2023) The International Natural Product Sciences Taskforce (INPST) and the power of Twitter networking exemplified through #INPST hashtag analysis. Phytomedicine, 108:154520.

2022

  1. Namba-Nzanguim CT, Turon G, Simoben CV, Tietjen I, Montaner LJ, Efange SMN, Duran-Frigola M, Ntie-Kang F. (2022) Artificial intelligence for antiviral drug discovery in low resourced settings: A perspective. Frontiers in Drug Discovery, 2:1013285.
  2. Babiaka SB, Onguene PA, Bekono BD, Ntie-Kang F. (2022) In silico and Computational Analysis of Plant Secondary Metabolites from African Medicinal Plants. In Applications in Plant Biotechnology: Focus on Plant Secondary Metabolism and Plant Molecular Pharming. Makzhoum, A.; Hefferon, K. (Editors). 2022, CRC Press Taylor & Francis: ISBN: 9780367344467.

2021

  1. Ebob OT, Babiaka SB, Ntie-Kang F. (2021) Natural Products as Potential Lead Compounds for Drug Discovery Against SARS-CoV-2. Natural Products and Bioprospecting, 11:611-628.
  2. Ibezim A, Onuku RS, Ibezim A, Ntie-Kang F, Nwodo NJ, Adikwu MU (2021) Structure-based virtual screening and molecular dynamics simulation studies to discover new SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitors. Scientific African, 14:e00970. 

Names of authors currently working at UB-CeDD are highlighted in bold.

The PI's publications before the creation of UB-CeDD.

The full publications list of the PI is available here