Our Purpose: an African Owned Solution to Infectious Diseases
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 one of our indications, 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.
FAQs: The FOUR most frequently asked questions:
What are AKAGERA Medicines’ goals?
First, to use our therapeutics to fight NTMs, MRSA, and TB; and to use our vaccines to eradicate Lassa Fever, HIV, maternal and child RSV, and help prevent an Avian Flu pandemic.
Second, we believe that great strategy is reconciling what other people think are opposites. We intend to provide strong financial returns in the medium term to all of our shareholders from our sales and collaborations in America, Europe, Korea, and Japan. This business model, an “enterprise solution to disease”, will provide resources for our work in Africa and the rest of the Majority World so that we can provide access to desperately needed therapeutics and vaccines at or near the cost-to-serve the poorest people in the world.
Third, to contribute to the development of a Pan African Medical Cluster and its related and supporting industries: hospitals, educational institutions, suppliers, manufacturers, clinical trial operators, regulatory agencies, and intellectual property creators. Our Pan-African strategy will reach the next milestones in 2025 with manufacturing in Senegal, Trials in Southern Africa, planning a new laboratory and Trials in Rwanda, and receiving investments from across the continent.
Why and how did AKAGERA Medicines become majority owned by Africans?
The founders of the company saw an opportunity to serve the unmet needs of Africa and the Majority World (i.e., India, China, South America, Russia), which include a total addressable market of 1.4 billion Africans and 6 billion in other low and middle income countries (LMICs). They felt that some of the poorest people in the world should own one of the world’s great STEM companies; that the means of production should be owned by the people who suffer the most from the diseases. Dr. Paul Farmer said, “Put the power next to the problem.”
Rwanda is considered a pro-business, anti-corruption, low-income country. The Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB), AKAGERA’s lead institutional investor, has nearly $2 billion in assets that it manages on behalf of 14 million citizens. RSSB management was trained in the universities and corporations of the USA and France.
AKAGERA Medicines is an independent, Delaware, USA-registered company and subject to its laws and responsibilities to shareholders.
The company intends to have a liquidity event for all its shareholders and the people of Rwanda by 2027, and to create the financial resources for sustained development of world class medicines.
How have you managed to raise so much money at increasing valuations during the downturn in global biotech markets?
Management believes that a private enterprise fosters innovation, aligns incentives, creates clearer performance metrics, and is more output-oriented than other “innovation-focused” organizations.
Many investors and scientists believe that our technology is equal or superior to what global pharmaceutical companies demonstrate.
AKAGERA Medicines’ independent Board of Directors, according to Delaware law, has a duty of loyalty and a fiduciary responsibility to all of its stakeholders.
We enjoy the support of global multilateral institutions (GATES, NIH/VRC, European Investment Bank, CEPI) who help us to succeed.
The company had two uprounds of financing, and created leverage for investors, government agencies, and global civic organizations with large infusions of both private and grant capital.
While the biotech market has faced a downturn in the last three years, our valuation increased 25 times.
Is your intellectual property protected around the world?
Most global pharmaceutical companies protect their innovations in North America, Europe, and the wealthy parts of Asia, but not the rest of the world (RoW).
We cover a lot more geography. We made 79 filings in four years on 6 continents and scores of jurisdictions.
We've been awarded patents in the USA at a near record rate. The United States Patent Office described our technology, as "novel", and “possessing wide industrial applicability”. We work with the top IP attorneys in New York, Boston, Kigali, and Berlin (Greenberg Traurig, Gunderson, and Dentons) and have our own IP attorney on staff.
We build sustainable competitive advantages, and aggressively defend the interests of our owners, colleagues, and future patients.
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 TB 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 2026.
• 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.