Drug discovery opens up

Abstract

When an unremarkable stack of 96-well plates arrived in Fabrice F. Boyom’s lab in 2012, he couldn’t have known how the molecules stored inside would transform his research. Not only did the compounds accelerate his efforts to find treatments for tropical diseases, but they also attracted grants that furnished his lab with essential equipment and sparked international partnerships. “We have been able to develop collaborations across the world for drug discovery,” says Boyom, a biochemist at the University of Yaoundé I, in Cameroon. “The improvement has been huge.” The plates were part of the Malaria Box, packaged and shipped by the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), a nonprofit drug research foundation based in Geneva. Between 2011 and 2015, MMV distributed hundreds of these boxes, free of charge, to almost 200 research groups in 30 countries. The goal was to make it easier for academic researchers to discover new malaria treatments