Dr Kenechukwu Obikeze is a pharmacist, with a Bachelors in Pharmacy degree from the University of Nigeria, and a PhD in Pharmacy from the University of the Western Cape in 2009. He was appointed as Senior Lecturer in the School of Pharmacy at the University of the Western Cape in 2015 and has taught various topics in Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy to Pharmacy, Dentistry and Oral Health students at the University for over 10 years. He was a visiting researcher at the University of Missouri in 2016.
Dr Obikeze's research interest in cardiovascular Pharmacology focuses on the discovery of compounds with cardiovascular effects from natural products with a particular focus on ischaemic heart disease and conditions predisposing to ischaemic heart diseases such as hypertension and dyslipidemia. Dr Obikeze is skilled in various in silico, in vitro and in vivo models for cardiovascular research including Chemoinformatics and computational modelling software, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) and fluorescent-based assays, patch-clamping, isolated perfused heart and hypertensive Wistar rat models. He currently supervises student research at the Honours, Masters and Doctorate levels, and has research collaborations with colleagues at the South African Medicines Research Council (SMRC), University of Missouri, University of Nigeria and the Nigerian Institute of Human Virology.
Dr Obikeze is a Pharmacology expert in the South African Pharmacy Council's accreditation and monitoring committee, a Pharmacology and Toxicology moderator for the South African Pharmacy Council's professional examinations and a member of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences of South Africa and the South African Society for Basic and Clinical Pharmacology.
