Committee
Co Chairs
Prof. Rose Hayeshi
Rose Hayeshi (PhD) is a Professor and Director of the DSI/NWU Preclinical Drug Development Platform (PCDDP), Faculty of Health Sciences, North-West University, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry with research interests in humanised mouse models for preclinical drug development. She works in interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborative teams involved in different aspects of drug development in which she leads the preclinical drug development studies. She has co-authored over 30 publications and three book chapters (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1836-2179). She is a member of the South Africa Young Academy of Sciences; a fellow of the AfOx Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship Scheme, Africa Oxford Initiative and a fellow of the Africa Science Leadership Programme.
Rose has trained a number of postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Dr. Julius O. Enoru
Julius O Enoru (Ph.D.) is a Director (Senior Principal Research Scientist) at the Department of Qualitative Translational and ADME Sciences (QTAS), AbbVie Pharmaceutical Research & Development, South San Francisco, CA, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Vrije Universiteit Brussels(VUB), Belgium and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship program in the department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now Pfizer), Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Julius is a subject matter expert in Translational ADME sciences, currently responsible for oversight of pre-FIH in Vitro ADME Sciences functions at the AbbVie South San Francisco, CA site. He has contributed to many INDs, NDAs and contributes towards responses to enquiries from regulatory agencies. Julius represents AbbVie on the pharmaceutical industry consortium – International Consortium for Innovation and Quality in Pharmaceutical Development – Guidelines for development of Targeted Covalent Inhibitors Working Group. He has been a mentor to many students and early career scientists. Julius is enthusiastic about the advancements of xenobiotic research in the African continent and seeks to find partners and establish collaboration with industry/academic colleagues to continue advancing the field of ADME. Julius is a member of ISSX, AAPS, ASCPT and other International professional organizations.
Committee Members
Dr. Ogochukwu Amaeze
Dr. Ogochukwu Amaeze is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lagos, Nigeria. She holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy, a Master’s degree in Clinical Pharmacy, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Pharmacy, from the University of Lagos. Her research focuses on pharmacokinetic modeling of drug disposition in maternal and pediatric populations, as well as the development of physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models to predict complex drug-drug and drug-disease interactions. Additionally, she is interested in investigating adverse interactions between conventional and African herbal medicines, predicting clinically relevant herb-drug interactions using PBPK models, and studying the impact of ancestry-specific pharmacogenetics on drug disposition in the West African population. Dr. Amaeze has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications and mentored undergraduate and graduate students. She is a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics and other local and international professional associations.
Dr Roslyn Thelingwani
Dr Roslyn Thelingwani is a preclinical Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) scientist with research focus in the area of antiparasitic drugs and neglected diseases. She has more than 10 years experience in the area. She trained as a biochemist the University of Zimbabwe where she did her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Biochemistry and Biotechnology respectively. She then received her PhD from the University of Cape Town South Africa. Besides her research, she has supported many clinical trials and preclinical projects with bioanalysis on either the HPLC or mass spectrometer. She has also led a team that set-up the first DNA testing center in Zimbabwe at the African Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology. Other notable achievements include the set- up of the state of the art bioanalytical laboratory and ADME toolkit for screening new drug candidates for safety and ADME liabilities, again the first of its kind in Zimbabwe. A dedicated scientist and mother of two, Dr Thelingwani believes the sky is the limit and her ambition is expanding the Forensic Services and bioanalytical laboratory to a capacity that is able to support national and regional needs. She is currently a Global Health and Equity Scholar where she has received a grant to support her research on the safety and efficacy of praziquantel when co-administered with antiretroviral drugs, and the implications on mass drug administration programs. She has also received a supporting grant from The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) for the same study.
Dr Tracey Hurrell
Dr Wihan Pheiffer
Dr Wihan Pheiffer is a senior lecturer at the North-West University. He is part of the DSI/NWU Preclinical Drug Development Platform. He trained as a toxicologist with interests in toxicology, biopharmaceutics, and pharmacokinetics. His research involves pharmaceutical sciences, particularly in investigating drug herb interactions of traditional medicines and smokes in rodent models.
Dr. Mathew Njoroge
Mathew Njoroge is a senior scientist at the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D), University of Cape Town (UCT), where he works as part of a multidisciplinary team to advance preclinical drug discovery projects. His interest in drug discovery was sparked during his undergraduate in Pharmacy at the University of Nairobi and forged during postgraduate studies with Prof. Kelly Chibale’s group at UCT, where he graduated with his PhD in 2010.
His postgraduate work, and his career since then have focused on understanding the metabolism and pharmacokinetics of compounds with a view to translating in vitro data to human exposure – efficacy relationships, as part of drug discovery projects in malaria, tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance. This work, combined with H3Ds mission to build Africa-specific models, has led to research interests in drug metabolism and disposition in the African population – more specifically in considering the impact of pharmacogenetic variability on the pharmacokinetics of drugs in African populations.