As director of UCT’s Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D), the main thrust of Professor Chibale’s research can be described as drug discovery for communicable parasitic and bacterial diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis.

Using a variety of approaches to clarify how new drugs work, Chibale and his laboratory have contributed fundamental scientific knowledge. Among other achievements, Chibale and his team identified the enzyme of the human malaria parasite that is the target for MMV048, an antimalarial clinical drug candidate. MMV048 marks the first time that an international drug development effort led by Africa has taken a small molecule from screening through to human clinical trials.