By Linda Naa Deide Aryeetey
London, April 7, GNA – A Ghanaian researcher is developing lab-on-a-chip technology integrated with artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery and reduce the cost of developing medicines.
The innovation is expected to support healthcare research and local drug development efforts in Ghana and across Africa.
Dr Ofosua Adi-Darko, Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana School of Pharmacy, said the technology could shorten timelines for developing medicines and vaccines while reducing reliance on costly laboratory infrastructure and animal testing.
Her work at Imperial College London, is supported by a fellowship funded by Schmidt Sciences in collaboration with the Governments of the United Kingdom and Ghana.
Speaking to Ghanaian journalists during a UK-Ghana Science, Technology and Innovation media study tour at Imperial College London, Dr Adi-Darko said the lab-on-a-chip system used microfluidic chips to simulate biological environments such as the human intestine.
She said the chips manipulated very small volumes of liquid in nanolitres and picolitres within microchannels to analyse how drugs moved through biological membranes.
“This technology allows us to mimic what happens in the human body, particularly how drugs pass through membranes for absorption,” she said.
Dr Adi-Darko said the chips contained wells and channels that enabled multiple experiments to run simultaneously, allowing scientists to observe how drug compounds crossed artificial membranes.
She said the rate at which drugs moved across the membranes helped determine their potential effectiveness.
“Instead of running one experiment at a time, we can run hundreds simultaneously. This significantly reduces the time and cost involved in drug discovery,” she said.
Dr Adi-Darko said the technology enabled early-stage screening of compounds, reducing the need for animal testing.
She said the research also integrated artificial intelligence to analyse large datasets, detect patterns and predict outcomes.
“AI enables us to uncover complex data patterns and make predictions about drug behaviour more accurately,” she said.
Dr Adi-Darko said the approach would enable efficient testing of locally sourced compounds, including natural products.
“This approach allows us to explore compounds from Ghana and predict their effectiveness quickly. It can support Ghana’s efforts to develop vaccines and locally manufactured medicines by improving early-stage research,” she said.
Dr Adi-Darko began the fellowship in September last year and is expected to complete the one-year programme before returning to Ghana.
She is collaborating with researchers at the Imperial College AI for Science Centre on the development of AI-driven scientific tools.
Edited by Kenneth Sackey