Kelly chibale biography

  • Kelly Chibale PhD, MASSAf,
  • Biography. B.Sc. Ed. (1987),

    • Prof Kelly Chibale

    Professors

    Biography

    • B.Sc. Ed. (1987), University of Zambia, Zambia
    • Cambridge–Livingstone Trust Scholar, PhD (1989-92), University of Cambridge, UK
    • Sir William Ramsay British Postdoctoral Research Fellow (1992-94), University of Liverpool, UK
    • Contract Lecturer (1996—97), University of Cape Town, RSA
    • Lecturer (1997—2000) University of Cape Town, RSA
    • Senior Lecturer (2001—2003), University of Cape Town, RSA
    • Associate Professor (2004—2006), University of Cape Town, RSA
    • Professor (2007—present), University of Cape Town, RSA
    • Employed: Technical Officer, Assistant Shift Manager, Development Chemist (1987-89), Kafironda Explosives Limited, Mufulira, Zambia
    • Wellcome Trust International Prize Travelling Research Fellow (1994-96), Scripps Research Institute, USA
    • Wellcome Trust Visiting Fellow (1998), University of Cambridge and University of Dundee, UK
    • Sandler Sabbatical Fellow (2002), University of California, San Francisco, USA
    • Invited Professor (2002), Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, France
    • US Fulbright Senior Research Scholar (2008), University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, USA
    • Visiting Professor (2008), Pfizer Global Research & Development, Sandwich, UK
    • Full Member, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IIDMM)
    • Tier 1 South Africa Research Chair in Drug Discovery under the South African Research Chairs Initiative
    • Director, South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery and Development Research Unit
    • Founder and Director, UCT Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D) - See more at H3D Website: http://www.h3d.uct.ac.za/
    • Member of the American Chemical Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and Life Fellow of the University of Cape Town.

    Research Interests

    Our current medicinal chemistry programme against the causative agents of malaria

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  • Kelly Chibale PhD, MASSAf, FAAS, Fellow

    • Kelly Chibale

    Organic chemistry professor (born 1964)

    Kelly ChibalePhD, MASSAf, FAAS, Fellow of UCT, FRSSAf, FRSC (born 1964) is professor of organic chemistry at the University of Cape Town, and the founder and director of H3D research center and H3D Foundation NPC. In 2018 he was recognised as one of Fortune magazine's top 50 World's Greatest Leaders. His research focuses on drug discovery and the development of tools and models to contribute to improving treatment outcomes in people of African descent or heritage.

    Early life and education

    Chibale grew up without electricity or running water in Muwele Village, Chief Chiundaponde, Mpika district, Zambia. His parents are Elizabeth Malekano Chanda and Harrison Chibale. He studied chemistry at the University of Zambia, graduating in 1987. Chibale worked at Kafironda Explosives in Mufulira. As there were no opportunities for graduate studies in Zambia, he moved to the University of Cambridge for his PhD, working in Stuart Warren's group on synthetic organic chemistry of optically active molecules. He was funded by a Cambridge Livingstone Trust scholarship.

    Research and career

    Following his PhD, Chibale joined the University of Liverpool as a Sir William Ramsay British Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He developed optically active alcohols using lanthanides. In 1994 he joined the Scripps Research Institute, creating complicated natural and designed molecules from organic building blocks. He began to explore angiogenesis inhibitors, which can be used to stop cancer cells developing new blood vessels. Inspired by medicinal chemistry, Chibale returned to Africa in 1996. In 2002 he joined the University of California, San Francisco as a Sandler Foundation Sabbatical Fellow. He was promoted to the rank of  Professor in 2007 and a Life Fellow of the University of Cape Town in 2009. His group

  • Kelly Chibale, a professor

    • Kelly Chibale: Leading the way in African drug discovery

    The rag in Kelly Chibale’s rags-to-riches story is the lit one he used to put into a paraffin-filled tub so that he could study at night. Brought up amid violence and squalor in the Zambian copper belt settlement of Kabulanda — whose name, he says, literally denotes “sadness” — Mr Chibale has fashioned a successful career from a tough start.

    The 54-year-old is the founder and director of H3D, Africa’s only fully integrated drug discovery centre, which in 2017 became the first to put an “African drug” — an anti-malarial — into Phase II clinical trials. A member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, in 2018 he was named by Fortune as one of the world’s top 50 leaders.

    At Cape Town university, Mr Chibale is in charge of more than 60 post-doctoral scientists working full and part-time for H3D, which he established in 2010. It has grown from a team of five, with a $1m annual budget, to a unit doing what Mr Chibale says is work on a par with global pharmaceutical companies.

    H3D receives funding from the likes of Novartis and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the South African government.

    “I want to debunk this myth that Africa cannot lead international efforts to innovate in the pharmaceutical space and actually discover drugs,” says Mr Chibale. “It’s what I call confronting Afro-pessimism,” he says, talking in his Cape Town laboratory. “As an African I cannot demand respect, I have to earn it. Not just by what I say, but also by my actions.”

    It is not just about persuading outsiders that African innovation is worth taking seriously, he says. The biggest sceptics are Africans. “They can’t think that a guy like me from the townships and the villages of Zambia can lead international efforts and do something that is world class and innovative.”

    Mr Chibale was born in 1964; his father died two months later. Urged on by his mother, a market trader, he understood that