Kelly Chibale

Kelly Chibale is a Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He holds the DST/NRF South African National Research Chair in Drug Discovery. He is also Director of the South African Medical Research Council (MRC/UCT) Drug Discovery and Development Research unit. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science and the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT. Chibale has expertise in synthetic medicinal chemistry. His research involves “hit to lead” and “lead optimization” with attendant integration of in silico as well as in vitro and in vivo drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics studies, to guide the synthesis of new drug leads. His current research interests lie in the discovery of potential drugs that fight malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, cancer, hypertension and cardiovascular disease