About

Project Overview

C4D is a non-profit initiative to discover chemical entities from nature for future medicines. The initial focus will be on anti-infective medical drugs urgently needed in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). C4D will create a virtual international centre for anti-infective medical drug research, with over 25 scientific hubs and counting including those in LMICs across five continents. With open science and trust at C4D’s core, the hubs are sharing their state-of-the-art expertise, technology and infrastructure.

The Challenge

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the top 10 global public health threats (WHO). In 2019, it led to 1.27 million global deaths and is expected to kill 10 million people annually by 2050. One in five deaths attributed to AMR were in children under 5 and 99.7% of those children were living in LMICs (Murray et al., 2022). Lack of availability of novel anti-infective medicines is a global problem that severely affects whole countries and regions, with children and the elderly particularly impacted. As it is widely recognised that people in LMICs bear the greatest burden of drug-resistant infections. It is critical that medical drug discovery and development capacity is created alongside LMIC patient populations, to understand and meet their health needs and so the global collaborative effort and expertise of C4D is needed.

Expected Impacts

  • Creation of a worldwide network of early drug discovery experts that work in collaboration with open science and trust.

  • Discovery of new chemical molecules for the development of novel anti-infective medicines.

  • Development of technology to predict biological activities, connecting metabolites and their structural features to bioactivities.

  • Discovery and development of medical drugs alongside LMICs to understand and meet their health needs.

  • LMICs no longer bear the greatest burden of drug-resistant infections and have access to life-saving medicines.

  • LMIC lab research networks are enhanced and their drug discovery research capabilities are advanced.