“It’s Mind-Boggling People Still Die from Malaria” – Prof. Mochly-Rosen

…Local Drug Development is Cheaper, More Impactful

…SPARK Empowers Communities with Practical Tools

Professor Daria Mochly-Rosen, a Stanford University expert in chemical and systems biology, has spent nearly two decades leading SPARK Global—a program that empowers local scientists to find and implement homegrown solutions in public health. Now adopted in over 12 African countries, SPARK is reshaping how nations tackle diseases by shifting focus from foreign prescriptions to local innovation.

In an interview with Africa Health Report’s John Nwokocha & Juliet Jacob, Mochly-Rosen explained the programme’s plans to partner with Nigeria’s Ministry of Health and NIPRD. For the first time, she said, SPARK initiated contact with a country—instead of the other way around.

Can you give a brief overview of your upcoming programme with the Nigerian Ministry of Health and NIPRD?

This is the first time we initiated contact with a country to start SPARK. Usually, it’s the other way round. The event will be sometime in February. Some of our advisors and leaders of the programme here (the US), the industry advisor, will fly to Nigeria. We hope to spend a big part of a week providing tools, not to do anything ourselves, but to use local ideas that are plentiful and address unmet needs that the people in Nigeria consider important. I think the West tends to send advice and money mostly for infectious diseases. But in Africa, people die from diabetes, stroke, and Alzheimer’s, like everyone else. So why always focus only on malaria?

SPARK Global works in various areas like cancer and maternal health. Why did you choose to collaborate with Nigeria?

When countries decide to invest in something, they need to see how this investment translates into local benefits. Eventually, you’ll be happy if you also become a light for other countries. In 2023 or 2024, we published an article in Nature Biotechnology about the economic impact of SPARK at Stanford — how many companies started, how many drugs were under development, and the financial consequences. Taiwan saw that article, and this year they published a similar one about what happened in Taiwan. A country with great science, like Nigeria and many others, is showing what happens when you invest in this model.

At Stanford, we’re luckier. We have many investors, a lot of entrepreneurship, biotechnology, and advisors. When we went to Taiwan, it was a desert, nothing from a drug development point of view. But people everywhere are smart and creative. Within 10 years, they were doing almost as well as Stanford. It’s about taking the example of Stanford and Taiwan and showing that in a resource-rich place like Silicon Valley or Taiwan’s universities, you can achieve the same in Nigeria.

SPARK programmes in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea are doing well. How about ensuring good ideas in Africa get proper support too? It’s not about money; we never have enough in academia. But about training and providing models for how to develop things locally, based on the abundant intelligence available. So, we started SPARK Africa about five years ago and have been interacting with several countries.

In Nigeria, boot camps are expensive to organise, and money is tight. I spoke to Dr. Pate because I knew in Nigeria, funds for such events, though not much, were more accessible. We’re all volunteers. You need to accommodate people from other countries. It is possible Nigeria could host SPARK Africa events more frequently.

Malaria and infant mortality remain major issues in Nigeria. What are your thoughts on the new breakthrough in treatments for children and newborns?

Yes. Like cancer, like everything else. They are solvable problems. My father had malaria, so I am very familiar with it. It is mind-boggling that malaria is still so common in Africa, and that people still die from it. It is just heartbreaking. Why can’t we solve it? Some solutions, like mosquito nets, are good, but they are not the final solution. We need effective drug treatments, too, and new drugs are being developed even recently.

Many other drugs, like Tamoxifen, a drug used for women with breast cancer, have issues, too. It was discovered that some Africans don’t benefit because Tamoxifen is a pro-drug; it needs to be activated by the liver. And some women lack the right enzyme to activate it. It is not just Africans; many East Asian women lack the enzyme, too. So now there are clinical studies in Taiwan looking at women who can’t metabolise Tamoxifen to avoid giving them a drug that won’t help. And that eventually leads to deaths from breast cancer. Here is an example where an idea from Africa is benefiting people globally.

My point is, it is really in the interest of the world to make sure good ideas don’t die wherever they originate. It shows again that intelligence is not geographically restricted, and what a waste if we let a good idea that can solve a health problem anywhere die.

I wonder how many of the clinical studies were done in Africa, and whether it is equally effective in Africa as it is in other places where it has been tested. Let’s say in East Asia, where malaria also exists. I think that is the challenge, that many drugs are not tested in the countries where they are going to be used. That is a problem because you need to make sure it fits the local population and whether there’s proper infrastructure like refrigeration for storage, and so on.

There are no shortcuts, especially in maternal and child health, the most vulnerable population. The mortality rate of women at birth and children under five in Africa is mind-boggling. The West has largely addressed it, but it continues here. The question is why local solutions aren’t implemented, though they exist. Often it is due to a lack of know-how. SPARK also helps reposition existing treatments by building local knowledge.

During COVID, we developed a preventive measure, not a vaccine, but an antibody produced in eggs from chickens immunised with a protein. The chickens and eggs are safe. The antibodies in the egg can be isolated and used as nose drops or mouthwash to protect against viral transmission.

Not just for Africa, it could be anywhere. SPARK programme completed a phase one study proving safety. The Zimbabwe government showed interest, and they’re replicating the programme and creating manufacturing locally. During COVID, we showed undergraduates how to purify these antibodies from eggs using simple equipment. You could do it even in a kitchen with electricity and water. In three weeks, you could produce an antiviral measure locally. One chicken could provide enough for a family, and after the outbreak, you could eat the chicken.

Cancer remains a global challenge, especially for late-stage patients. Does your programme offer any hope or plans for cancer treatment?

I think the challenge with cancer, or any other disease is that it is often multiple diseases with multiple causes and elements. Cancer is a good example: it is treated with one type of tool, which is toxic to the rest of the body but hopefully less toxic relative to the cancer cells. More recently, we see that cancer is being treated as different diseases. A brain cancer of one type is different from another type, or liver or skin cancers. That gives me hope that cancer will be managed better if we understand the unique properties of each type and stop treating it as one disease.

It is easier to treat cancer at earlier stages; at stage four, it is very different. My short answer is yes.  I am optimistic. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I weren’t. I think it’s a finite problem. Any problem has a solution; there is a solution, and it can work. If they agree, we won’t force volunteers. It is possible to have ongoing programmes.

One thing that was discovered about cancer is that cancer cells have one form of metabolism, while metastases have others. They use different sources of energy. So, when you treat the primary tumor focusing on its metabolism, you may kill it, but the metastases survive because they use different mechanisms. We also discovered that neighbouring healthy cells actually help cancer cells; they donate resources like mitochondria. Neurons give their mitochondria to nearby tumors, which then grow faster. If we understand this process and prevent healthy cells from helping cancer cells, essentially starving them locally, we can perhaps solve that, too. Do I believe science will eventually figure this out? Yes, I do. How fast? You never know. A breakthrough might be just around the corner.

The local problem is perhaps just a matter of training in what needs to be done properly to be effective. I think since there’s already will and ability, it will happen. But I can’t tell you how many years it will take.  It depends on whether the program is sustainable and if there’s patience, because it takes years. You create a community, and every time you teach, you build people who continue to grow the community of those who know how to translate ideas and address the unmet needs. In Mozambique, the people were thinking about solutions, and our advisors tried to help them implement it. Usually, we don’t work this way, but we can try another course with this in mind if that would be more effective.

What major challenges have you faced running SPARK Global?

I would say that there is a challenge. Publishing science has now become such an expensive thing to do. Journals require $10,000 to publish, when $10,000 is probably the budget for a year for a lab to run. As a result, I don’t know about Nigerian science, but many African scientists publish in less famous journals, not because it’s of lower quality or less interesting.  But it is just too expensive to go to top journals. And the information dies. Nobody pays attention to that. That’s such a loss, not only for Africa, but for all of us.