Dr. (Mrs.) Cynthia Amaning Danquah, a Senior Lecturer, Department of Pharmacology, of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi has won the 2020 Africa Oxford Research Development Award (AfOx ReDA) from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

She received £50,000 to collaborate with Prof. Christopher Schofield from the University of Oxford, on natural product drug discovery to tackle antibiotic resistance and develop new antibacterial agents to fight resistance in tuberculosis (TB).

Antibiotic resistance is described by the World Health Organisation as one of the greatest challenges to infectious diseases, including Tuberculosis. The treatment duration, extensive side effects, and limited drug availability in TB therapies hinders successful treatment.

The AfOx Research Development Award builds on existing AfOx-funded collaborations between researchers in African Institutions and the University of Oxford to address one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and aims to generate societal benefits beyond creating knowledge in their area of specialisation. The AfOx ReDA awards are intended to help stimulate larger collaborative projects that will strengthen Africa-Oxford partnerships and make the collaborating partners competitive for future major awards. They are expected to support the formation of equitable partnerships with Oxford and other colleagues.

With the support of an AfOx Travel Grant awarded to her in 2019, Dr. Danquah with the research team in Oxford shared knowledge around antibiotic resistance and synthetic medicinal chemistry.

Dr. (Mrs.) Cynthia Amaning Danquah obtained her BPharm (Hons) and MPhil (Pharmacology) degrees from KNUST in 2001 and 2008 respectively; and earned her PhD from the School of Pharmacy, University College London, UK in 2016. She is a visiting scholar/research associate to Birkbeck, University of London, University of Nottingham, King’s College London and the University of Oxford.

Her research interest spans across natural product drug discovery, antimicrobial resistance, infectious diseases, natural product pharmacology and toxicology. She is also a recipient of the KNUST Research Fund (KREF) Interdisciplinary award and KREF Seed grant, 2019. She is an Affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Country ambassador, British Pharmacological Society (BPS) member and a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH).

Dr. Danquah has participated in several international conferences and workshops across the globe including London, Glasgow, Birmingham, in the UK; Washington DC, San Diego California and Ohio Northern in USA; Copenhagen, Denmark; Chatenay-Malabry, France; Düsseldorf, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland in Europe; Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa.

She is a reviewer for international academic journals including Nature Scientific Reports; Elsevier’s Phytochemistry Letters, Tuberculosis and Scientific African.

The Management of KNUST congratulates Dr. (Mrs.) Cynthia Amaning Danquah for winning this prestigious award.