Dr Benson Edagwa, an associated professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, last week received the university’s most prestigious awards for teaching, research, engagement, and commercialisation.
Edagwa is listed as an inventor on 19 unique new invention notifications which have led to 84 patent and patent applications.
He also is listed as an inventor on 45 pending patent applications and 11 issued patents.
Those numbers put Dr Edagwa in the top one per cent of all innovative faculty at UNMC, the university said in a statement.
He has worked for 10.5 years at UNMC, becoming one of the most productive and innovative faculty members, the university said.
Dr Edagwa, who studied a BSC in Chemistry at Moi University, has played a pivotal role in the development of several inventions to treat chronic viral and other infectious diseases, including hepatitis B and mycobacterial tuberculosis.
He also formed significant collaborations with industry, having co-founded Exavir Therapeutics, a startup company created to develop the long-acting antiretroviral technology he created in the lab.
“I am very humbled to have been selected for this prestigious award,” Dr Edagwa said. “This recognition reflects our team’s commitment to create more effective and convenient long-acting treatments for patients suffering from persistent illnesses.
“Thank you to those who continue to support our efforts. I am truly honoured and proud of our team and collaborators.”
Prof Edagwa was in 2019 named the emerging inventor of the year by the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, where he works to date.
Said Bradley Britigan, the dean of the UNMC College of Medicine, said in a statement: “My congratulations to Dr Edagwa on his receipt of this year’s Innovation, Development and Engagement Award award. His research over his time at UNMC is yielding novel approaches to therapy of many chronic infectious diseases that has the potential to impact many who suffer from these conditions throughout the world. Such work epitomises what the IDEA award is intended to recognise.”
Award recipients are selected by system-wide committees of faculty members and community members. Each recipient receives a $10,000 stipend.
Seven other researchers at the university were honoured.
The university’s interim President Chris Kabourek, said: “We are fortunate that our classrooms and research labs are led by people who care deeply about creating a strong future for students and our state.”
Seven years ago, Edagwa invented a game-changing technique that would allow people with HIV to take ARVs only once in six months or once a year.
The revolutionary process could eventually replace the gruelling daily drug-taking routine, and lead to better adherence.
Edagwa and his team first introduced this invention called the Long-acting slow effective release antiretroviral therapy (Laser Art) to the world in November 2017.
More recently, Laser Art was combined with a gene-editing technology to eliminate HIV in mice, proving that it is possible to cure HIV.
Edagwa and a team of researchers described the results in Nature Communications Journal in July 2019, announcing they had successfully eliminated HIV from humanised mice.
“The system works and improvements to our technologies demonstrating an increase in laboratory animal cure rates will be published in the coming months. New collaborations with the Clinton Health Access Initiative have been started to accelerate the translation of these technologies. We are in the early stages in all of these but we will get to the finish line,” he told the Star at that time.
Edagwa grew up in Isitsi village, Sabatia constituency in Vihiga and was a day scholar at Mbale High School, sitting his KCSE in 1999.
