Walter Wilson Nana
Buea, Cameroon
The Anglo-Saxon styled University of Buea, UB has broken new grounds in the arena of international academia. Information from UB’s authorities have it that the institution is a recipient of the prestigious Grand Challenges Explorations Grant, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr. Fidelis Cho-Ngwa, Head of the Pan-African ANDI Centre of Excellence, University of Buea
The grant, meant for Groundbreaking Research in Global Health and Development is under the supervision of Dr. Fidelis Cho-Ngwa, Associate Professor of Biochemistry, UB in collaboration with Dr. Sara Lustigman of the New York Blood Center, USA. These eminent varsity dons are expected to pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “Toward the Development of Safe Onchocerca Macrofilaricides”.
The Grand Challenges Explorations, GCE, funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how to solve persistent global health and development challenges. Dr. Cho-Ngwa’s project is one of more than 80 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 11 grants, selected from over 2,700 applications (approximately 3% success rate), announced November 20, 2013 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To receive funding, Dr. Cho-Ngwa and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 11 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global health and development topic areas that included development of the next generation condom, agriculture development, and neglected tropical diseases.
According to Dr. Cho-Ngwa Onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness is the second leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide. Treatment of onchocerciasis patients with ivermectin, the only currently recommended drug, in areas of co-endemicity with loaisis often presents serious safety problems, including fatalities, because of its activity on Loa loa microfilariae. “This causes fear for ivermectin and results also to lower community-directed mass drug administration compliance in such areas. We propose to develop an innovative in vivo small animal model where newly identified Onchocerca macrofilaricidal compounds can be verified for their effective lack of activity on Loa loa microfilariae and help the present global macrofilaricidal drug discovery pipelines,” he explained.
The Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, over 850 people in more than 50 countries have received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant programme is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organisation. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of US$100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million.
Dr. Cho-Ngwa, Head of Department, Biochemistry is also the Director of the Pan-African ANDI Center of Excellence for onchocerciasis Drug Research in UB, Cameroon. His close collaborator, Dr. Sara Lustigman is a globally renowned filarial scientist and Head of the Laboratory for Molecular Parasitology at the New York Blood Center, USA. Dr. Cho-Ngwa has 18 years of experience working on onchocerciasis, and Dr. Lustigman has over 25 years in the area.
