Natural Product Research Network for Eastern and Central Africa

Prof Dibungi Kalenda

There are NAPRECA members in Botswana, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe

To create a GIS (Geographic Information System) based Data Bank on medicinal plants of the DRC with information on chemical composition, structures of isolated substances, pharmacological data, bioactive extracts, ethno-pharmacology, ethno- botany, geographical coordinates of collected specimen, ecology of habitat, consumption by bonobos, chromatographic profiles of bioactive extracts (HPTLC, HPLC and GC profiles), IR-, MS- and NMR-spectra of pure compounds, data on bioactivity of extracts gained in “in vivo systems pathology and systems pharmacology”

- With help of Grid Computing, establish a distributional correlation of well-defined groups of secondary phytoconstituents with existing plant classification systems and use it in the search for biologically active natural products

- With help of Grid Computing, predict where plants that are most likely to yield biologically active compounds can be found in the DRC as well as in otherNAPRECA member countries

- With help of Grid Computing and using ranking algorithms, speed up the in silico drug discovery from natural products (we are interested to use not only the structures of pure compounds on known biological targets, but also to test how data (and what types of data) gained on extracts can be used to predict their bioactivity on biologicalsystem

The research has to contribute to the reduction of poverty, especially for the rural population and to the exploitation of the Congolese forests in a sustainable manner. It will contribute to speed up drug discovery from Congolese rain forests.