Phytochemistry, the Military and Health

A member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Phytochemistry Society of Europe (PSE), the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), and an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Andrew is a Medicinal Chemist trained under the Wellcome Center for Anti-infectives Research (WCAiR) at the Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee in Scotland as part of his PhD studies. He also did his PhD at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology under the Pharm-Biotechnology and Traditional Medicine Centre in Uganda and attended a Phytochemistry PhD summer School at Kenya’s Egerton University on a DAAD scholarship. His main area of interest is drug design and development using medicinal chemistry aspects and various computational and synthetic techniques to obtain logical hits to leads for particular biological targets from synthetic scaffolds in various libraries, de novo as well as from natural products. He did his MSc degree in Applied Chemistry (Natural Product Chemistry). He has a passion to coach and train upcoming drug discoverers to search for drugs beyond plant extracts to compound level towards optimization. Before joining the academia, Andrew served in various portfolios including but not limited to being Quality Assurance Manager for Valid Nutrition’s therapeutic foods’ factory, assistant Quality Manager (Shifts controller) for Alliance one international tobacco processors and graduate trainee for the Japanese Tobacco International (JTI), Malawi factory. He founded Leptons Scientific consultants in 2011 and has provided consultancy services in his areas of expertise to various clients. For close to a decade now, Andrew has also been researching military strategies, security and weaponry among others. He studied intelligence analysis and is trained in H2H close combat. He has published various journal articles and book chapters with various publishers such as Elsevier and is a reviewer for various journals including Systematic Reviews, Tuberculosis and of late, the African Health Sciences among others. Apart from this book, he is also the lead editor of the book ‘Poisonous Plants and Phytochemicals in Drug Discovery’ by Wiley. Currently, Andrew is a Chemistry lecturer at the Malawi University of Science and Technology in Malawi.

Medicinal Chemist, Chemistry Section, Department of Applied Studies, Malawi Institute of Technology, Malawi University of Science and Technology

Chukwuebuka Egbuna is a chartered chemist, a chemical analyst, and an academic researcher. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Chemists of Nigeria (ICCON), the Nigerian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (NSBMB), the Society of Quality Assurance (SQA) (USA), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) (United Kingdom). Egbuna is also an editor of new Elsevier series on Drug Discovery Update. The series includes books, monographs and edited collections from all areas of drug discovery, including emerging therapeutic claims for the treatment of diseases. He has been engaged in a number of roles at New Divine Favor Pharmaceutical Industry Limited, Akuzor Nkpor, Anambra State, Nigeria, and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU) in Nigeria. He has collaboratively worked and published quite a number of research articles in the area of phytochemistry, nutrition and toxicology and related areas. He is a reviewer and editorial board member of various journals, including serving as a website administrator for the Tropical Journal of Applied Natural Sciences (TJANS), a journal of the faculty of Natural Sciences, COOU and as an advisory board member under toxicology for the book publisher, Cambridge Scholar Publishing. His primary research interests are in phytochemistry, nutrition and toxicology, food and medicinal chemistry, and analytical biochemistry.

Nutritional Biochemistry Unit, Africa Centre of Excellence in Public Health and Toxicological Research (ACE-PUTOR), University of Port-Harcourt, Rivers State; Department of Biochemistry, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Uli, Nigeria