Chukwunonso Nwabufo
I'm A Pharmacologist An Entrepreneur A Transformational leader
I am advancing the implementation of precision medicine in global healthcare and accelerating the development of transformative drugs by applying pharmacological principles.
Chukwunonso Nwabufo
Pharmacologist, Entrepreneur, Transformational leader
What I do
I deploy pharmacological principles to develop safe and effective drugs for unmet medical needs
I am advancing the implementation of precision medicine in global healthcare through OneDrug’s innovative medical devices
I use my creative and innovative skills to solve the world’s most pressing problems in global healthcare
I am the founder and CEO of OneDrug, an innovative biotech startup that is advancing the implementation of precision medicine in global healthcare by developing smart point-of-care diagnostic devices to support individualized treatment. Support OneDrug.
I have used my visionary, effective communication, and innovative skills to transform several organizations including Purpose Driven Men, Pharmacokinetic, Pharmacodynamic, and Drug Metabolism Community of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, New Investigators Forum of the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics, and Drug Metabolism Reviews Journal
I contributed to the development of approved live-saving medicines including Remdesivir and Lenacapavir for the treatment of COVID-19 and HIV respectively. I uncovered the preclinical safety and efficacy of 3 novel compounds under basic science research for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. I am currently using COVID-19 drug development as a case study to unravel strategies for developing safe and efficacious drugs for respiratory diseases. Google scholar.
What I do
I deploy pharmacological principles to develop safe and effective drugs for unmet medical needs
I am advancing the implementation of precision medicine in global healthcare through OneDrug’s innovative medical devices
I use my creative and innovative skills to solve the world’s most pressing problems in global healthcare
My Services
I am the founder and CEO of OneDrug, an innovative biotech startup that is advancing the implementation of precision medicine in global healthcare by developing smart point-of-care diagnostic devices to support individualized treatment. Support OneDrug.
I have used my visionary, effective communication, and innovative skills to transform several organizations including Purpose Driven Men, Pharmacokinetic, Pharmacodynamic, and Drug Metabolism Community of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, New Investigators Forum of the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics, and Drug Metabolism Reviews Journal
I contributed to the development of approved live-saving medicines including Remdesivir and Lenacapavir for the treatment of COVID-19 and HIV respectively. I uncovered the preclinical safety and efficacy of 3 novel compounds under basic science research for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. I am currently using COVID-19 drug development as a case study to unravel strategies for developing safe and efficacious drugs for respiratory diseases. Google scholar.
Impact Highlight
About Chukwunonso
Live. Powerful. Impactful
I am the founder and CEO of OneDrug and a multiple award-winning pharmacologist with over five years’ experience in drug development across academia and the pharmaceutical industry. I have received > 20 awards and recognitions worth more than C$200K in funding due to my academic, research, and leadership accomplishments. I have authored 13 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 11 industry-standard peer-reviewed reports in support of drug development programs.
As a PhD student in pharmaceutical sciences at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, I am uncovering pharmacological strategies for improving the safety and efficacy of respiratory medicines, particularly, promising drugs for SARS-CoV-2 infection. I ranked 11.65% out of 515 national applicants and received the prestigious Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Award valued at C$105K to support my doctoral work. I am also funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarships – Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplements Award to predict the optimal dosing regimen for promising COVID-19 drugs. My research work on optimizing the pharmacology of respiratory medicines has received C$120K in funding from the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto.
Milestones
University of Toronto, Canada
PhD Pharmaceutical Sciences, 4.0/4.0 ‖ 2024
Quantic School of Business and Technology, USA
Master of Business Administration, 93% ‖ 2021
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
MSc Pharmacy, 90.5% ‖ 2019
University of Benin, Nigeria
BSc Biochemistry, 91% ‖ 2015
OneDrug
Founder and CEO ‖ 2021-Present
Gilead Sciences, Canada
Senior Research Associate, Analytical Operations ‖ 2019-2021
Approved Life-saving Drugs
2 approved and commercialized life-saving medicines
COVID-19 Drug Development
2 high impact most-read scientific papers with a combined total readership
of 3k+ supporting the development of transformative medicines for COVID-
19 drugs
Drug Development for Parkinson’s disease
– 3 novel compounds under basic science research for the treatment and/or
diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease
– 4 high impact scientific papers supporting the drug development for
Parkinson’s disease
– 1 most read papers, 2 trending papers, and 1 paper with over 5k+ readership
Pharmacology and Therapeutics
– Guest editor for a special issue on enhancing the predictive power of
preclinical models for expedited drug development, which resulted in nine
contributions in Drug Metabolism Reviews journal from experts in top
academic and biopharmaceutical institutions
– 4 high impact scientific papers informing the use of pharmacological
methods to advance drug development programs
Drug Metabolism Reviews
Editorial Board Member
American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, USA
Vice Chair, Pharmacokinetic, Pharmacodynamic, & Drug Metabolism Community
Science Rendezvous
Judge, 2022 SRHacks Hackathon
Western Canadian Medicinal Chemistry Workshop
2018 Session Co-chair
COVID-19 Drug Development
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo and Reina Bendayan (2022) Pharmacokinetic Considerations to Optimize Clinical Outcomes for COVID-19 Drugs, Trends Pharmacol. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tips.2022.09.005
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo and Reina Bendayan (2022) SARS-CoV-2 Infection Dysregulates Drug Metabolism and Transport, AAPS Pharmsci360, https://www.eventscribe.net/2022/PharmSci360/index.asp?posterTarget=528858
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo and Omozojie P. Aigbogun (2022) Potential Application of Mass Spectrometry Imaging in Pharmacokinetic Studies, Xenobiotica. https://doi.org/10.1080/00498254.2022.2119900
Drug Development for Parkinson’s Disease
- Omozojie P. Aigbogun, Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, Madeline N. Owens, Kevin J. H. Allen, Jeremy S. Lee, Christopher P. Phenix & Ed S. Krol (2022) An HPLC-UV validated bioanalytical method for measurement of in vitro phase 1 kinetics of α-synuclein binding bifunctional compounds. Xenobiotica, https://doi.org/10.1080/00498254.2022.2140315
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo and Omozojie P. Aigbogun (2022) Diagnostic and Therapeutic Agents that Target Alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s Disease. J Neurol, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-022-11267-9
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, Omozojie P. Aigbogun, Kevin J.H Allen, Madeline N. Owens, Jeremy S. Lee, Christopher P. Phenix & Ed S. Krol (2021) Employing in vitro metabolism to guide design of F-labelled PET probes of novel α-synuclein binding bifunctional compounds. Xenobiotica, https://doi.org/10.1080/00498254.2021.1943566
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo and Ed S Krol (2019) Unraveling the Metabolic Fate of Novel Dimer Compounds for Parkinson’s disease. Drug Metab Pharmacokinet, 1016/j.dmpk.2018.09.208
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, Anas El-Aneed, and Ed S Krol (2019) Tandem Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Novel Caffeine Scaffold-Based Bifunctional Compounds for Parkinson’s disease. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom, https://doi.org/10.1002/rcm.8540
Pharmacology and Therapeutics
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo (2022) Relevance of ABC Transporters in Drug Development. Drug Metab., 10.2174/1389200223666220621113524
- Aarzoo Thakur, Zhiyuan Tan, Tsubasa Kameyama, Eman El-Khateeb, Shakti Nagpal, Stephanie Malone, Rohitash Jamwal & Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo* (2021) Bioanalytical Strategies in Drug Discovery and Development. Drug Metab Rev, https://doi.org/10.1080/03602532.2021.1959606
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo (2021) Introduction to the mini special issue on next generation drug discovery and development: rethinking translational pharmacology for accelerated drug development. Drug Metab Rev, https://doi.org/10.1080/03602532.2021.1909614
- Laura E. Russell, Yitian Zhou, Ahmed A. Almousa, Jasleen K. Sodhi, Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo & Volker M. Lauschke (2021) Pharmacogenomics in the era of next generation sequencing – from byte to bedside. Drug Metab Rev, https://doi.org/10.1080/03602532.2021.1909613
- Laura E. Russell and Mary Alexandra Schleiff, Eric Gonzalez, Aaron G. Bart, Fabio Broccatelli, Jessica H. Hartman, W. Griffith Humphreys, Volker M. Lauschke, Iain Martin, Chukwunonso Nwabufo, Bhagwat Prasad, Emily E. Scott, Matthew Segall, Ryan Takahashi, Mitchell E. Taub, Jasleen K. Sodhi, 2020. Advances in the Study of Drug Metabolism – Symposium Report of the 12th Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics. Drug Metab Rev, https://doi.org/10.1080/03602532.2020.1765793
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, and Olusanya Olasehinde, 2017. Biochemical Effect of aqueous extract of Hibiscus sabdariffa on the reproductive hormones of male Wistar Advances in Applied Science Research 8(2), 38-41
- Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, and Ugbogbo, C., 2016. Designing Life: The future of Genetic Engineering. 3(6), 51-55
Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo, 2014. Hybridoma technology: A tool in immunotherapy. Microbiology World, 8, 29-37
Milestones
University of Toronto, Canada
PhD Pharmaceutical Sciences, 4.0/4.0 ‖ 2024
Quantic School of Business and Technology, USA
Master of Business Administration, 93% ‖ 2021
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
MSc Pharmacy, 90.5% ‖ 2019
University of Benin, Nigeria
BSc Biochemistry, 91% ‖ 2015
OneDrug
Founder and CEO ‖ 2021-Present
Gilead Sciences, Canada
Senior Research Associate, Analytical Operations ‖ 2019-2021
Approved Life-saving Drugs
- https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2022/12/sunlenca-lenacapavir-receives-fda-approval-as-a-firstinclass-twiceyearly-treatment-option-for-people-living-with-multidrug-resistant-hiv
- https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-releases/2020/10/us-food-and-drug-administration-approves-gileads-antiviral-veklury-remdesivir-for-treatment-of-covid19#:~:text=(Nasdaq%3A%20GILD)%20today%20announced,virus%20that%20causes%20COVID%2D19.
COVID-19 Drug Development
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tips.2022.09.005
- https://www.eventscribe.net/2022/PharmSci360/index.asp?posterTarget=528858
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00498254.2022.2119900
Drug Development for Parkinson’s disease
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00498254.2022.2140315
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00498254.2021.1943566
- https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rcm.8540
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-022-11267-9
Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Drug Metabolism Reviews
Editorial Board Member
American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, USA
Vice Chair, Pharmacokinetic, Pharmacodynamic, & Drug Metabolism Community
Science Rendezvous
Judge, 2022 SRHacks Hackathon
Western Canadian Medicinal Chemistry Workshop
2018 Session Co-chair
Awards and Honors
Media Appearance
Leading Scientific Associations
Renowned Academic Institutions
News Outlet
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2021/06/02/dont-let-the-next-pandemic-meet-this-pharmaceutical-sector/269104/
- https://www.alzforum.org/papers/diagnostic-and-therapeutic-agents-target-alpha-synuclein-parkinsons-disease
- https://www.alzforum.org/papers/employing-vitro-metabolism-guide-design-f-labelled-pet-probes-novel-synuclein-binding
- https://www.alzforum.org/papers/hplc-uv-validated-bioanalytical-method-measurement-vitro-phase-1-kinetics-synuclein-binding
Latest Blog
Breaking the Cycle of Excuses: Living Your Fullest Potential
Excuses are the bedrock of comfort, providing us with the illusion of protection from the discomfort of uncertainty and the fear of failure. We convince
The Principle of Surrendering: A Paradigm Shift for Achieving Your Dreams
Many of us have been taught that success comes from hard work, dedication, and persistence. While these values are certainly important, they can also be
The Journey to Becoming Who You’re Called to Be
As Oprah Winfrey once said, what everyone wants is to live the highest, truest, and fullest expression of themselves. However, many people struggle to do