Staff | Kelly Chibale Research Unit

Dr Vinayak Singh

Senior Research Officer | TB and AMR Biology

Vinayak (MSc-Biotechnology, PhD-Biochemistry) is an exceptionally skilled experimental biologist with >15 years of extensive drug discovery research experience.

He has outstanding knowledge of the field of Microbiology, and of the related fields of Biochemistry as well as Microbial Genetics, Genomics and Physiology, especially as they apply to tuberculosis. Vinayak’s exceptional skills as a microbiologist with high-level expertise in antimicrobial drug discovery and development began from his experience at the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, India, where he completed a PhD degree in Biochemistry. Next, he joined the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he completed a very successful postdoctoral fellowship (2011-2016) in the lab of Prof. Valerie Mizrahi. He joined UCT’s Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D) in Jan 2017. He served as the lead researcher on studies that have been published in top international journals. Importantly, he has identified and validated >15 novel tuberculosis drug targets which have attracted significant interest in the global tuberculosis research community. His work is defined by the characteristics of scientific excellence and rigour as evidenced by his publications and awards. Being an artist of Molecular networks, Genomics and Metabolomics, his main interest is to deconvolute mechanism of action of potential compounds to fulfil a broad and acute interest in the discovery of new innovative drugs.

Dr Kathryn J. Wicht

Research Officer | Chemical Biology and Parasitology

Kathryn received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Cape Town in 2015, where her research focused on high-throughput screening (HTS) for novel antimalarial compounds targeting the hemozoin formation pathway and medicinal chemistry optimization of the hit compounds. Computational modeling of the data, pooled with publically available HTS results, allowed for the development of Bayesian models to predict antiplasmodial activity and describe the common features of hemozoin inhibiting compounds. Synthesis and biological testing of the derivatives provided tool compounds for further understanding of the mechanism in which hemozoin inhibitors accumulate and result in the increase of free heme in the Plasmodium falciparum parasite’s digestive vacuole.
In 2015, Kathryn commenced a postdoctoral research fellowship at the H3D Drug Discovery and Development Centre in Cape Town, which gave her further invaluable experience in the field of medicinal and synthetic chemistry, working to develop a late lead series for an MMV-funded project.
From 2017 to 2020, Kathryn carried out postdoctoral research in the Fidock Lab, at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Here, she was involved in multiple projects focusing on different aspects of antimalarial drug discovery, drug resistance and malaria genomics. This included conducting accumulation studies with radiolabeled antimalarials in resistant field isolates; carrying out resistance selection experiments with novel compounds to elucidate mechanisms of resistance and identify new drugs targets; computational modeling of mutations in the cryo-EM solved structure of the P. falciparum chloroquine resistance transporter (PfCRT); and genetically editing African malaria parasites with drug-resistance conferring PfCRT mutations, which are present in Southeast Asia. This work showed the ability of important antimalarials to become less effective in Africa if these mutations were to arise there.
In March 2020, Kathryn rejoined UCT and H3D as a Research Officer. She aspires to support malaria research activities at UCT/H3D by utilizing her diverse experimental skills and antimalarial drug development experience, supervising postgraduate students within the Department of Chemistry and helping to expand malaria genomics research in South Africa.

Dr John Woodland

Research Officer | Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry

John is a chemical scientist with interdisciplinary research experience and a passionate interest in developing molecular strategies, such as treatments and tools, to tackle the scourge of infectious disease. His current role as a research officer at the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre, under the mentorship of Professor Kelly Chibale, involves conducting research in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry aspects of malaria drug discovery; specifically, mode-of-action studies and target deconvolution of hit compounds active against the human malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum), the medicinal chemistry optimisation of noncovalent and covalent inhibitors of Plasmodium kinases, and the integration of machine learning into workflows at the H3D Centre to reduce compound attrition rates.

John completed his doctorate in the Department of Chemistry at UCT in 2016. His thesis embraced a diverse range of experimental techniques and led to the development of chemical biology probes to investigate drug localisation and drug-protein binding in the malaria parasite. He then spent two years in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UCT with Professor Janet Hapgood focusing on steroid receptors and hormonal contraceptives in the context of another devastating infectious disease, HIV. John then joined the H3D Centre as a postdoctoral medicinal chemist (2019–2020), allowing him to continue to pursue his interests at the interface of chemistry and other disciplines by designing and synthesising potential drug leads for malaria, and then as a Junior Research Fellow specialising in chemical biology (2021–2022).

John is also passionate about using his skills to promote science and to improve scientific literacy in South Africa. Besides teaching and supervising postgraduate students, he is actively involved with H3D’s capacity-building initiatives and the activities of the local section of the Royal Society of Chemistry. John’s other major interest is music. He directs his own choral group, VOX Cape Town, and has volunteered as a broadcaster on community station Fine Music Radio since 2006.