The Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) is strengthening Ghana’s capacity to contribute to the discovery and development of new antimalarial medicines through the establishment of locally developed and internationally validated drug discovery platforms.
This was highlighted at a Special Institutional Seminar held at the Institute on 22 September 2026, where Dr. Festus Acquah, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Immunology, presented his research titled, “From Activity to Target Identification: Enhancing Antimalarial Drug Discovery in Ghana.”
The seminar brought together researchers and staff of the Institute to learn about progress being made to build local capacity for early-stage antimalarial drug discovery and to explore opportunities for expanding the work.
Dr. Acquah noted that the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance continue to underscore the need for new compounds with novel modes of action. This is particularly important for sub-Saharan Africa, which carries a significant share of the global malaria burden but has historically depended heavily on research and drug development capacity outside the continent.
Against this backdrop, the research programme at NMIMR is focused on strengthening local capacity to evaluate promising compounds and advance them through key stages of early drug discovery.
Through collaborations with the Gates Foundation, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the University of Dundee and other partners, the team has developed, optimised and validated a range of laboratory assays for studying the activity of potential antimalarial compounds against the asexual blood stage of the malaria parasite. These include assays for high-throughput screening, drug activity, the kinetics of parasite killing and the potential for compounds to select for drug-resistant parasites.
The team has also established workflows for generating and studying resistant malaria parasites as part of efforts to identify potential drug targets. This allows researchers to move beyond determining whether a compound is active against the parasite to investigating how it works and identifying the molecular targets through which it exerts its effects.
A significant achievement has been the comparison of data generated through the NMIMR assays with results from international reference laboratories. Dr. Acquah reported that locally generated drug activity data showed correlations of more than 90 percent with results from international laboratories. The resistance-related assays also produced results comparable with those obtained from collaborating reference laboratories.
The team has further demonstrated its capacity to generate and clone resistant parasite populations. These parasites can subsequently be studied to identify genetic changes associated with resistance, providing important information for drug target identification and validation.
The programme is continuing to expand through collaborations with the Gates Foundation, MMV and the University of Dundee. Areas being pursued include the establishment of Antimalarial Resistance Barcoding assays to support drug target identification and the development of a robust gametocidal assay to identify compounds with potential to block malaria transmission.
While the current work focuses primarily on the asexual blood stage of the malaria parasite, Dr. Acquah also highlighted the importance of investigating other stages of the parasite’s life cycle. Research targeting the sexual stages presents additional technical challenges but could contribute to the development of medicines with transmission-blocking potential.
The longer-term vision is to complement the existing in-vitro platforms with animal models and other preclinical approaches, further strengthening the Institute’s capacity for antimalarial drug discovery.
During the question-and-answer session, participants engaged Dr. Acquah on the sustainability and future expansion of the programme, funding opportunities, the use of different malaria parasite strains, the potential application of the drug discovery platform to other pathogens, and the possibility of using the assays to investigate herbal medicines.
Dr. Acquah explained that although malaria remains the immediate focus, the Ghana Drug Discovery Hub is intended to have broader applications. The expertise, infrastructure and approaches being developed could potentially be adapted to support drug discovery research against other infectious diseases.
He also expressed his ambition to contribute to building a comprehensive drug discovery platform at NMIMR that can support the progression of promising compounds from exploratory research and screening towards preclinical development.
The seminar highlighted the progress being made at NMIMR to strengthen local expertise, infrastructure and partnerships for antimalarial drug discovery. It also underscored the importance of sustained investment and collaboration in enabling African research institutions to contribute more strongly to the discovery and development of medicines for diseases that disproportionately affect the continent.