Overview

Afya: a Swahili word meaning "Health"

Afya World Medicines was incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation in the State of Washington in 2007.  In January 2008 Afya merged into the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) and became a separate division.  Our mission is to discover new drugs to treat tuberculosis, a major health problem in the developing world and a future threat to the developed world as well.

Edward Kesicki and Joshua Odingo were co-founders of Afya and former colleagues in the Chemical Sciences Department at ICOS Corporation. Together they represent two decades of small-molecule drug discovery experience including hit identification, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization.

The ICOS drug discovery group brought eight new drug candidates to the development stage, three of which proceeded to human clinical trials.

Why is Afya needed?

The fight against diseases in developing countries has become an economic, political and moral quest as never before. The confluence of biomedical science and powerful philanthropy have made Seattle the "epicenter" of global health research. World-class institutions such as SBRI, IDRI, PATH and the University of Washington have placed the Pacific Northwest at the leading edge of these efforts through their innovative initiatives including vaccines and appropriate health technologies. However, finding new drugs requires more than genomics and biological assays - it requires chemistry. Afya World Medicines fills a gap in the neglected disease drug discovery pipeline and will bring the chemistry power of the pharmaceutical industry to the heart of global health research.

What we do

The sculptor Michelangelo said "I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free." As drug discovery chemists, we find molecular structures and sculpt them into drugs using the tools of organic chemistry. Nearly every drug - even one found in nature - is created or touched by chemists.

Specifically, thanks to a donation by Eli Lilly and Company, Afya will have access to state-of-the-art equipment made available in the wake of the 2007 Lilly purchase of ICOS Corporation of Bothell, WA.  As a result, one of the premiere high-throughput screening centers on the west coast of the US can remain intact and  be used in the search for new inhibitors of disease organisms.  We will begin by focusing on tuberculosis, a serious disease that has resurfaced as a potential wordwide threat.

Why is Afya unique?

GSK, AstraZeneca and Novartis have established infectious disease laboratories in Spain, India, and Singapore, but economic realities offer the pharmaceutical industry few incentives to discover new drugs for diseases of the developing world. Much of this research takes place in universities and small institutions that have high staffing turnover and limited resources. Afya World Medicines, however, offers an independent team of experienced drug discovery chemists in the heart of the Seattle global health community.

Founder biographies

Edward A. Kesicki, Ph.D.

Dr. Kesicki has over 11 years of experience in small-molecule drug discovery with increasing levels of management responsibility. He initiated hit validation and lead optimization for the ICOS Chk1 kinase program that resulted in an anti-cancer compound that recently entered Phase I clinical trials. He also was instrumental in discovering pre-clinical candidates in two other kinase programs that were licensed to outside parties. Dr. Kesicki was also a member of the team that discovered IC485, a PDE4 inhibitor that completed Phase II clinical trials. He is an inventor on over 20 patents in 5 target areas, an author on numerous peer-reviewed articles, and was an invited speaker at several national meetings. Dr. Kesicki is fluent in Spanish, and his extensive travels in Latin America have inspired him to work towards solutions to problems of global health and third world diseases. He received a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. Before joining Icos in 1997, he worked as a scientist at Prolinx Inc., a Seattle-area biotech startup, where he was an inventor of a key molecule in the Linx® affinity chromatography system, later distributed by Invitrogen Corporation.

Joshua Oluoch Odingo, Ph.D.

Prior to joining Afya, Dr. Odingo served as a staff scientist at ICOS Corporation, rising to the level of a senior staff scientist and medicinal chemistry group leader 1997 to 2006. Dr. Odingo made key contributions to the discovery of IC485 (PDE inhibitor, Phase 2 COPD). He managed and led project teams that discovered IC492 (PDE4 inhibitor) and preclinical prostaglandin D2 receptor (DP2) antagonists.

From 1994 to 1997, Dr. Odingo held a postdoctoral scientist position at Genentech Inc. where he conducted research on combinatorial chemistry methodology development and compound library synthesis. He holds a BSc. (Hons) / MSc. degrees in natural products chemistry from University of Nairobi, Kenya and obtained MA, MS and Ph.D. degrees in organic chemistry from Columbia University, New York. Dr. Odingo is co-inventor on over seven patents, issued or pending. He has co-authored over 11 manuscripts/abstracts and has been an invited speaker at two scientific conferences.

Kerry W. Fowler, Ph.D.

Dr. Fowler was a founder of Afya but decided to leave the day-to-day operations.  He was hired as the first medicinal chemist at ICOS in 1991. After the completion of the phosphodiesterase collaboration with Glaxo that led to the drug Cialis (tadalafil), he built a diverse and accomplished medicinal chemistry team that successfully conducted hit-to-lead and lead optimization, ultimately delivering eight small molecule candidates into development, all discovered under his leadership. Dr. Fowler also provided expertise in patent litigation, chemical informatics, and computational chemistry. He is co-inventor on over 35 US patents.

In 1989 he built a chemistry group at the Seattle startup Oculon Corporation.  At G.D. Searle & Company he worked as a medicinal chemist and cardiovascular group leader. He received his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Yale and conducted postdoctoral research in chemical carcinogenesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Fowler serves as Chair-Elect of the Puget Sound Section of the American Chemical Society.

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Image at top of page: PDB structure 2DFT.  From: Dias, M.V., Faim, L.M., Vasconcelos, I.B., de Oliveira, J.S., Basso, L.A., Santos, D.S., de Azevedo, W.F. Effects of the magnesium and chloride ions and shikimate on the structure of shikimate kinase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis ACTA CRYSTALLOGR.,SECT.F v63 pp.1-6 , 2007.  Depiction generated by PyMol:  DeLano, W.L. The PyMOL Molecular Graphics System (2002) on World Wide Web http://www.pymol.org