Our Purpose
The Moral Purpose of Akagera Medicines is to 1. Create medicines that lead to a world free of tuberculosis (TB), humankind’s greatest killer. This means improving efficacy, shortening the duration of treatment, optimizing drug/drug interaction, eliminating toxicity, and lowering the costs to patients and to society; and 2. Complete the development of our vaccine delivery system that can be used for TB, LASSA FEVER, HIV, RSV, INFLUENZA and other infections. This delivery system, our patent-protected anti-microbial liposome, avoids intra-muscular reactions, passes through the lymph system and targets and binds to the dendritic cells at the gateway of the immune system. This means side effects should be minimal, and this formulation should create a durable T-cell response (5-10 years) across most or all variants. Preclinical proof of concept results in COVID, for example, show 50 times the signal, which translates to 10% of the dose by other companies, and therefore significant cost savings and greater accessibility for citizens of the Majority World.
Akagera Medicines’ Key Institutional Partners provide guidance, funding, and talent.
Our Goals
• To initiate clinical trials in humans with TB treatment in Q4/24;
• To reduce the global incidence of TB deaths by 80% in the next decade;
• To eradicate the multi-drug resistant (MDR) form of TB (Proof of Concept achieved);
• To explore the high probability that Akagera Medicines' approach will work to create treatments and vaccines in other infectious diseases like COVID/SARS where we already achieved preclinical Proof of Concept, and MRSA, Lassa Fever, INFLUENZA, RSV, and HIV; to develop our multivalent vaccine delivery system, and to enter two vaccine candidates into Human Safety trials in 2025.
• And to ensure that those treatments could be manufactured, tested, and distributed in the heart of Africa.
Our Methods
• Integrative Thinking: The genesis of the approach was to take the tools and insights from other domains of science and apply them to infectious diseases.
• Competitive Advantages: 1.) Science: Our knowledge of structure – activity relationships, and ability to place an effective molecule inside a nano-lipid particle that accumulates in the granuloma and dendritic cells. 2.) Shared Vision: The team’s two decades long history of collaboration and success with discovery, manufacturing, clinical testing and commercialization. 3.) Global Context: A trusted network of leaders at the top of the fields of economic development, philanthropy, venture investing and healthcare equity.
• Strategic focus: a "target lead, early development" company, registered in Delaware, with laboratories in Boston and San Francisco, a fully-owned subsidiary in Kigali, Rwanda and partners in California, Colorado, China, Germany and India. Akagera Medicines is committed to broad geographic scope, low product scope, narrow business segment scope, vertical integration for diseases of the poor, and low vertical integration for global applications.
• Alignment: between a new class of owners, the people of Rwanda, and a multi-disciplinary team of executives and scientists who were trained in the USA, Ireland, India, Germany, Russia, Canada, and Rwanda.
Akagera Medicines actively supports 9 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations: 1. End Poverty in all its forms, 3. Promote Healthy Lives, 8. Promote Productive Employment, 9. Build Resilient Infrastructure and Innovation, 10. Reduce Inequalities, 11. Support Sustainable Communities, 12. Promote Responsible Production, 16. Build Accountable and Inclusive Institutions, 17. Strengthen Global Partnerships. https://sdgs.un.org/goals
Pre-clinical Outcomes and “Desired Side Effects”
In Q1 2021, Akagera Medicines demonstrated pre-clinical proof-of-concept in the treatment of MDR-TB and MRSA: very low toxicity as measured by neuropathy and blood chemistry, shorter duration of treatment, low drug/drug interaction, and up to ten times improvement in efficacy over the relevant comparator. In fact, many of the results were below the scientific limits of detection (L.O.D.).
There will be proof-of-concept of another kind: that inspiration and intelligence are evenly spread throughout the world, and that “vaccine apartheid” can be left behind as global health equity is spurred by entrepreneurs and scientists with track records of success, and by the vision, determination and ownership of the ultimate stakeholders, those who have suffered from the disease far too long.