Slow translation of Tropical Africas wealth in medicinal plants into the clinic: Current biomolecular infrastructural capacity and gaps in sub-Saharan universities

Abstract

Tropical Africa has one of the world’s largest endowments in medicinal plant diversity. However, this potential has not been translated into pure drugs of proven efficacy and safety synonymous with modern pharmaceuticals. The basis for the slow translation of Tropical Africa’s medicinal plant wealth into value-added medicines acceptable in the doctor’s clinic is not clear. In this work, we sought to understand the patterns of research on African medicinal plants in general, and the capacity of sub-Saharan universities to conduct value-building research on plant-derived medicines in particular, using an extensive online search.  A near-exponential growth in number of publications over the period 2000 to 2015 was found. However, most of the primary literature is on preliminary pharmacological assays and ethnobotany/ethnopharmacology. Only 6% of the publications are on advanced investigations such as isolation, structure elucidation and semi-synthetic optimization of natural compounds, structural studies of drug targets, ligand binding studies and cell biological assays, yet they are fundamental to progression of lead compounds into useful drugs. Assessment of the current biomolecular infrastructure in 25 sub-Saharan universities found severe shortage of essential equipment in many of them. Only 64, 68, 36 and 68% of the sampled universities have high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) equipment, respectively. East, Central and West Africa are particularly deficient in most of the key equipment, and some available are non-functional. The purchase cost of most biomolecular research equipment is between USD 30,000 and USD 500,000. Further analysis shows that the cost of establishing comprehensive biomolecular research infrastructure in at least one university per sub-Saharan nation is negligible relative to their gross domestic products (GDPs). Thus, even with the current economic resources, sub-Saharan African countries would upgrade biomolecular research capabilities in their leading universities without disrupting other economic priorities. Key words: Medicinal plants, biomolecular, Tropical Africa, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), analog synthesis.