South African startup CureRoot is focused on discovering new pharmaceutical drugs from African medicinal plants, by using artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the time and cost of traditional drug discovery.
Formed in October of 2023 in Johannesburg by Njabulo Skhosana and Khonzisizwe Somani, CureRoot is focused on analysing plant compounds and uncovering their therapeutic potential for diseases like cancer and MDR-TB.
“Promising candidates are then validated in our lab. Our goal is to unlock Africa’s natural resources to develop innovative medicines for global health needs,” Skhosana said.
It does this using AI.
“We saw a gap in applying AI to explore African plants for new drugs. Africa’s biodiversity is largely untapped. While some companies explore natural products, few integrate AI with a specific focus on Africa. Our combination of African resources and AI gives us a unique advantage over traditional pharmaceutical companies and other biotech startups,” said Skhosana.
“While pre-clinical, the enthusiasm for our AI-driven approach to African natural medicines suggests good future adoption. Our secured pre-seed funding also indicates early confidence.”
As noted, CureRoot is currently raising a pre-seed round, with 50 per cent of its target already committed or wired.
“These funds will be used to expand our operations and find new treatments from African medicinal plants starting with a focus on on oncology, cancer and multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) in particular,” said Skhosana.
While its current operations are in Johannesburg, the startup has wider plans.
“We are targeting the global pharmaceutical market, focusing on treatments for oncology and MDR-TB. Our expansion plans include wider research collaborations across Africa and, as we advance, targeting markets with high prevalence of our focus diseases globally. We may also expand our pipeline to other areas where African plants show potential,” Skhosana said.
