Dr Phanankosi Moyo

Phanankosi Moyo is a biochemist with a keen interest in discovering drugs from natural products. Phanankosi is currently an AfOx Visiting Fellow at the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research, in the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme .

Phanankosi earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He completed two postdoctoral fellowships from October 2017 to June 2021, which were generously supported by the University of Pretoria Institute of Sustainable Malaria Control and the DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Sustainable Malaria Control. During this period, he focused on discovering and developing antimalarial drugs, with a specific focus on targeting both intra-erythrocytic asexual and sexual stages of the malaria parasite using natural products.

Currently, Phanankosi serves as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Biodiscovery Center, Department of Chemistry at the University of Pretoria. He is part of the Bioprospecting group under the guidance of Professor V. J. Maharaj. In his current role, Phanankosi is exploring the potential of natural products to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by searching for novel antimicrobial-agents and resistance-reversing compounds. He is doing this by exploring a unique pre-fractionated natural product repository housed in the Biodiscovery Center, University of Pretoria.

While in Oxford, Phanankosi's research project is titled "Nurturing power of nature": Inhibition of metallo-β-lactamases by plant-derived natural products of South African origin. He aims to discover novel hit compounds inhibiting the metallo-β-lactamase enzymes within a year.