Nigeria set to produce drugs to combat cancer

The National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) says it is set to produce drugs for the treatment of cancer.

The Director-General, Prof. Lucy Ogbadu made this disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja.

Ogbadu said that the agency in partnership with the African University of Science and Technology was working on the drugs that could be used to treat cancer ailments in patients.

"The success we have recorded on the treatment of cancer in partnership with the African University of Science and Technology is that we succeeded in isolating an active compound from the bread fruit plant.

"We subjected the plant to series of tests and it has been found to be effective against cancer.

"Having identified this compound, we now are using computer modeling to design the drug and after which it will be tested on experimental animals to see how it works on the experimental animals.

"It is after that that we can now go into production of the chemical compound as an efficacious material against cancer.

"So we are making progress in this aspect," Ogbadu said.

She said that the drug production would be a major breakthrough for the country because it would reduce the state of hopelessness that possesses the patients of cancer and also curtail medical tourism.

Speaking of on other projects undertaken by the agency, Ogbadu said that the agency had helped in the socio-economic development of the country by impacting skills on the citizenry to empower them.

"Our snail projects and grass cutter projects are all resident in our Bio-development centres.

"The agency is not to produce on a commercial scale, ours is to impact the skills of this production onto the citizens that want to go into the bio-enterprises.

"We equip bio entrepreneurs that will take them up and begin to cultivate or produce them and that is exactly what our bio resources development centres have been doing.

"We will train would-be entrepreneurs (bio-entrepreneurs) that will take up these bio enterprises and establish them as their businesses."

The director general added that the agency had also established a bio-ethanol plant at its centre at Ogbomosho which would be ready for commissioning soon. (NAN)