MMV has announced a new partnership with the University of Ghana’s Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) to strengthen antimalarial drug discovery. This collaboration focuses on enhancing NMIMR’s high-throughput screening (HTS) capacity, a critical step in accelerating the identification of new treatments. 

Drug discovery is a complex, multistep process requiring a significant investment of time and resources. NMIMR’s biology team, which is part of the Ghana Drug Discovery Hub, currently operates at a relatively low throughput, testing compounds in 96-well plates, which limits the number of samples processed and slows progress.  

Upgrading their platform to allow the use of 384-well plates, supported by state-of-the-art equipment, will greatly improve efficiency, reduce turnaround times and enable the simultaneous testing of thousands of compounds, helping to accelerate NMIMR’s drug discovery efforts.  

Through this initiative, NMIMR will receive HTS screening equipment as well as hands-on training provided by the University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit. The partnership will also perform a pilot screen of up to 9,000 compounds. 

Dr James Duffy, Senior Director of Drug Discovery at MMV, said, “MMV is delighted to partner with the Noguchi Memorial Institute. Strengthening scientific infrastructure and supporting the training of researchers to use it effectively are central to our mission of accelerating innovation for malaria.” 

Prof. Linda Eva Amoah, Associate Professor of Immunology at the University of Ghana, said, “I am highly elated about this partnership. It will significantly enhance our drug testing capacity as well as reduce the cost of testing. We are so happy to add on to the few existing laboratories in Africa that perform high throughput antimalaria drug screening.” 

This partnership will establish fully operational HTS capability, helping to fuel the drug discovery pipeline and further strengthening Africa’s role in advancing antimalarial drug discovery.