Kelly Chibale reveals the secrets of his funding journey

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Di Caelers 0.18

Good day. My name is Di Caelers and this is Nature Today, a podcast of Nature Africa. Today we're talking to Kelly Chibale, a professor of organic chemistry and founder of the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development Centre, known as H3D, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. More specifically, we are going to speak to him about his funding journey that led to the founding in 2010 of H3D, Africa's first Drug Discovery Centre. We will speak on Chibale’s early years at the University of Cape Town, or UCT, and how H3D has become one of the most celebrated drug discovery centres in Africa – and globally.

Kelly Chibale 1:02

I think that I'm going to share what I think it is we need to understand, and this is that. When you think about funding, okay, and the funding partners and whatever, this is my response when someone asked me about whether they were talking about racism or xenophobia, or whatever. I said the following. This is based on my experience. You have your own experience. Everyone has their own experience, but I will say this. Good and bad people, and idiots, they come from every race, every nation, every language, something that you know. So I have met, yeah, so, so … So you can't just start painting everyone and everything with the same brush, you know. You have to treat people and everything else on their own merits. Now, why am I telling you this? For me, the starting point is this, and this is relevant to the discussion we're having now about funding. There has to be first mutual interest, and I emphasize the word mutual, okay, because where there is mutual interest, there is mutual responsibility. And I emphasize again “mutual”, and where it's mutual responsibility, there is mutual accountability. And where there is mutual accountability, there is mutual respect. So, in this space that I operate in, when I started our drug discovery centre … I founded it in 2010, from nothing. If you come and visit me today, what you will see today did not exist when I moved here to Cape Town a long time ago. But the journey has been a model of capacity- building, if I can use that word. But focused on executing projects. In other words, it's a bottom-up approach.

Di Caelers 3:00

So how did H3D come into existence?

Kelly Chibale 3:05

Basically, starting from nothing and I mean nothing, at the level of infrastructure, at the level of technologies, and at the level of talent. I took a sabbatical and I went to Pfizer in the UK because I wanted to learn what it takes to set up a drug discovery organization. And then, when I returned from sabbatical, I took stock of what was needed at the level of infrastructure, at the level of talent, and at the level of platforms. So when I got an opportunity with Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) … they are based in Geneva. They are what we call a product development partnership, or a virtual research and development organization. So they don't have laboratories, but they work with partners – all the way from discovery to clinical testing, so, but they focus on malaria.

Di Caelers 4:13

Armed with the letter from the Medicines for Malaria Venture, Chibale turned to the Cape Biotech Trust a regional initiative of South Africa's then National Department of Science and Innovation. At the time, the DSI was exploring a biotech strategy that could trigger massive skills development, and even infrastructure.

Kelly Chibale 4:35

So I went and took this letter to CBT, the Cape Biotech Trust. Fadel Hendricks was the CEO at the time. And I said, look, this funder, this partner, is interested. They are willing to fund this research, but they don't fund infrastructure. So could you help us with infrastructure? So I'm talking about equipment and things, and thankfully they were able to provide me with some funding to develop the infrastructure, to buy the equipment we needed so that the project could take place. This is one malaria project, with five people I had at the time … just five. And the malaria project, with one partner and one funder. Today, because of the model that we used to develop this, not only do we have multiple partners funding – because, first of all, this project, when it started, it showed success. We actually discovered a drug that went into clinical trials … unprecedented, a first for Africa, that still remains a record. And then guess what?

Di Caelers 5:53

I remember that.

Kelly Chibale 5:53

And guess what? Ah! People started thinking, oooh, so these Africans an actually do something. And we didn’t do it alone. It was a partnership. But we led the partnership, we led. It was an African-led partnership. So guess what? On the back of that success, then partners started coming.

Di Caelers 6:16

Yeah.

Kelly Chibale 6:17

We had other pharmaceutical companies, now believing that actually there is expertise, there is talent, there are technology platforms that could be done, you know. And then we attracted many industry partners. We worked with Novartis, with Merck, with Celgene … other funding partners, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And guess what? Government funding started floating in, trickling in as well. Two years after CBT, they formed TIA, the Technology Innovation Agency, which took over all of the regional biotechnology incubators. They came under one umbrella. And guess what? Right from 2010, when I founded the centre, H3D. So this malaria project was in 2008 and 2009. This is even before the centre was formed. And guess what? We became a national government platform of the Technology Innovation Agency.

Di Caelers 7:17

As Chibale goes on to explain, H3D has grown in leaps and bounds since those early days in 2010, with their initial funding being leveraged to develop further capacity.

Kelly Chibale 7:31

So every year since 2010, we get a core budget from TIA, which is a government entity. And this is a significant budget because it supports the key infrastructure and a number of salaries. Maybe 20 people or so are supported from this grant. And guess what? Now, when the other funders, like the Gates Foundation as an example, and the same thing with MMV and other companies, guess what? Even today, as I speak to you ..,and maybe I'll cut this long story short, because I can go on forever with this. It's a nice story, but ….

Di Caelers 8:08

It is lovely.

Kelly Chibale 8:10

I'll keep it short. So I told you about starting with five people. Okay. This is excluding students. We don't count students. Today, we are sitting with 76 people.

Di Caelers 8:28

That’s astonishing.

Kelly Chibale 8:29

We had one platform, one technology platform in 2011, in chemistry. We have three technology platforms … integrated … what you would find in an innovative pharma company in the western world, you are going to see it here in Cape Town.

Di Caelers 8:43

Key to this expansion, says Chibale, was the development of partnerships, which continue to be explored today. Such as when, in 2022, H3D was named a Johnson and Johnson Centre for Global Health Discovery, one of only three globally.

Kelly Chibale 9:01

Last year was arguably the most significant year of our centre because it was when we became a Johnson and Johnson Centre for Global Health Discovery. Now, why is this a big deal? They have only set up three such centres in the world. This model of leveraging funding from local sources and international sources, because there is mutual interest. But remember this, the model of funding here is not … we have something to offer. You cannot talk about partnerships if you have nothing to bring to the table.

Di Caelers 9:47

Yeah.

Kelly Chibale 9:50

Because no one is a victim. That's why I go back to my earlier statement. Mutual interest. What is the interest of MMV or the Gates Foundation? They want to address global health issues and they look at the model in South Africa, where the government here, and on behalf of all of us is saying at this one department of the government here, an behalf of all of us, is saying that at this one department of the government. You know, other departments work differently, but anyway. So the Department of Science and Technology, or the Department of Science Innovation, which is an arm of the government, says that we are not just interested in sharing in the benefits. We are also interested in sharing in the risks.

Di Caelers 10:33

And, says Chibale, he is very confident that this funding model, founded on mutual interest, is replicable across the continent.

Kelly Chibale 10:44

This is why I'm giving this tremendous credit to MMV, because they were the initial partner that we worked with, and they helped us address the gaps that we had by accessing what we didn't have elsewhere through their network ¬ – because there was mutual interest. And because there was mutual interest, we took mutual responsibility, you know, so we were both mutually accountable. There is no victim here; with my partner, you bring something to the table. What are you bringing to the table? It's not always about the money, by the way. I think that this model can actually work, should be a model in other African countries as well. Because there is not a single country that can do it by itself, we need these partnerships.