“I feel that this training has given me sufficient exposure and the skills needed to enter into this space and to make a difference.”

With this encouraging reflection, Dr. Nicholas Bbosa, molecular virologist and pathogen genomics expert at The Medical Research Council (MRC) and Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), looks ahead during the closing week of the AU-EU Health Partnership – a programme designed to strengthen research on mpox and Lassa fever.

During his mobility at the University of Glasgow, Nicholas appreciated that he had the opportunity of adding a new layer of depth to the knowledge he already had in genomics, giving him a “more informative and comprehensive understanding of dynamics of infection”. He said, “in the past, I’d come across them mostly in the area of HIV, but now being applied to mpox, which is currently one of the viruses that I’m interested in and working with, was quite refreshing.” He is eager to bring this expanded expertise back to Uganda and collaborate with fellow scientists working on similar challenges.

After his time at the University of Ghana where he fully immersed himself in computational work on generated genomes, Nicholas was able to identify some markers that could be protective in infected individuals if they are enhanced. This discovery, he explains, has opened a new direction for his future research that could eventually contribute to the area of therapeutics.  

Across the continent Nicholas observes a significant shift: many African institutions have now developed the capacity to conduct modern genomic investigations and generate sequences and genomics data that they previously were unable to do. This progress has reduced the dependence on shipping samples to the Global North where they had the necessary technologies that were previously absent in many African countries. “The idea was just to ship samples,” he recalls. “Data is generated elsewhere. And then you lose that kind of autonomy on the data and the findings.” What is missing today, he argues, is translating basic research into something impactful that can have a tangible result like a diagnostic product or a vaccine. The problem is that many institutions do not have intellectual property policies or Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs). “Many scientists even do not know if those officers exist in the institutions where they are,” he notes.

One thing African universities can do to better respond to epidemics like mpox and Lassa fever, Nicholas reflects, is to “bridge the gap between public health initiatives like surveillance and outbreak response with research.” Secondly, he stresses the importance of supporting TTOs and initiatives that will be important to translate research into something that can have a tangible impact. “I think what African researchers can do better,” Nicholas reflects, “is to tag the public health surveillance and response teams with the researchers. They should move concurrently.” Having enough actionable data could translate into vaccines and therapeutics, and using public health data in research can better inform responses during epidemics.

Nicholas reflects that the translational aspect of research has been missing from health sciences in Africa. Introducing more translational research would increase the capacity to translate knowledge into something actionable that can reach the patients that are suffering from the epidemics. Reflecting on his own experience in Uganda, he says that when an outbreak like mpox happens, most of the diagnostics that are being used to diagnose diseases are imported from Asia. The cost implications of this are enormous, and there is also a danger of running out of testing kits. However, Nicholas argues that this is capacity that can actually be developed locally. “That is one area that would reduce that time of diagnosis and then allow for more timely interventions.”

“You need to design your research in such a way that, right from the outside, you’re thinking of making an impact…”

Mustapha Umar Imam, Professor of biochemistry and Director of the Centre for Vaccine Research and Biotechnology at the Federal University of Lafia, Nigeria shares his reflections on one of the central tensions he observed during the closing week of the AU-EU Health Partnership – a programme designed to strengthen research on mpox and Lassa fever.

During his stay at Pompeu Fabra University, Mustapha was particularly inspired by the hands-on approach of his hosts where fellows and supervisors exchanged and refined their translational research project, with a feedback loop that challenged assumptions and accelerated their understanding of Lassa fever and mpox which they have studied for a long time without access to the same facilities and broader set of ideas they were exposed to in Barcelona.

For Mustapha, this experience further fuelled his interest in Lassa fever. He even shared that he learned more about the virus during his two-week stay in Barcelona than anywhere else. It also prompted deeper reflection on how such expertise and capacity could be cultivated within Nigeria. He stressed that translational research should be strengthened not only by Africa-Europe collaboration but also by intra-Africa collaboration. Drawing from his experience, Mustapha called for African countries to build research ecosystems that can host valuable exchanges that can be creative and adapted to local realities. He is hopeful that the network he developed through the Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence on this fellowship is already laying groundwork for future collaboration, from aiming to secure joint grant applications to establishing shared research pipelines.

Mustapha imagines a future where a discovery made in Nigeria could be rapidly validated by colleagues from across the continent: with the potential innovation tested and eventually taken up by pharmaceutical companies for large-scale production across different countries. Joint funding, he added, could help build the critical mass around which a regulatory ecosystem can be established to make this vision a reality.

The fellowship also reshaped his understanding on the importance of how discoveries can be translated from lab to market to ensure they have an impact within society. “You need to design your research in such a way that, right from the outside, you’re thinking of making an impact,” he reflected.

Another key lesson from the fellowship was the importance of engaging not only regulators and policymakers but also communities. “If we don’t talk to the people that matter and the regulators, for example, policymakers and even people in the community, we cannot make a discovery,” he said. He pointed to the persistent challenge of vaccine hesitancy in Africa. Even when vaccines are free, people often refuse them because they feel disconnected from the research process or distrust the institutions behind it. “With enough funding, universities will be able to expand, do more in terms of disease response, and study diseases that are endemic to Africa, such as Lassa fever”.

“The North-South collaboration is also important of course, but maybe instead of pulling researchers from Africa to go and train in the North, it’s better for researchers from Europe to come and teach African researchers in their own setting”

Dr. Wakisa Kipandula, molecular diagnostics and infectious disease researcher at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, reflected on how collaboration across continents could be improved during the closing week of the AU-EU Health Partnership – a programme designed to strengthen research on mpox and Lassa fever.

During his visit to the University of Glasgow, one of the things that really impressed Wakisa was seeing the advanced technologies they have developed that can measure immune responses and evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines. “I’m coming from the molecular diagnostics and bacterial genomics background and seeing these assets is really impactful,” he explained. But the experience also highlighted a long-standing imbalance: Much of the research on diseases prevalent in Africa is still carried out in European laboratories. Several projects in Glasgow, he noted, were using samples shipped from Africa. One of the reasons for this, he says, could be that many African researchers simply do not have access to the same technologies. “We should look at how we can best build capacity locally to be able to do the research back home instead of sending the samples all the way to Europe.”

Wakisa emphasises the importance of promoting South-South collaboration, as a lot of African researchers are currently ‘working in silos’ instead of collaborating across institutions. He points out that even though North-South collaborations are important, it means less capacity is being built in Africa itself as many researchers train in the North. Once they return, it is difficult to implement what they have learned in their local settings. Instead, he says, it would be easier for a researcher from Malawi to travel to Uganda to exchange knowledge and do research.

To better respond to Lassa fever and mpox, Wakisa stressed the importance of coordination between governments and universities to combine efforts on outbreak investigation. In Malawi, for example, he says that they need to properly establish a transportation and management network for samples to better respond to the mpox epidemic. One issue, however, is that academic institutions lack funding to buy the necessary equipment and few have labs that can measure vaccine effectiveness. “There is a lack of capacity building to do these investigations in the labs that we have [..] and most universities don’t have a dedicated budget that can support researchers to conduct research on the mpox epidemic or even support the Ministry of Health”.

The experiences Wakisa gained during his time as a fellow in Uganda and Glasgow has changed the way thinks about translational research in the health sciences in Africa. “What I’ve learned so far is that it’s not just about collecting and publishing data, but that the data can be used to save lives”. Seeing how the University of Glasgow has developed technology that can measure the effectiveness of vaccines has inspired him to develop those kinds of technologies in Africa and to use it to work towards preventing future outbreaks rather than just measuring the effect during active outbreaks.