Building research capacity in Africa

Chinyere Opia 0:15

You’re listening to Science in Africa. This is a Nature Africa podcast; and I am Chinyere Opia.In this episode, we're learning more about Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) – commonly known as sleeping sickness. This neglected tropical disease is targeted for elimination by 2030. It is often fatal without early diagnosis and prompt treatment, but recognisable symptoms may appear several months or years after infection.

Chinwe Chukwudi is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Veterinary Pathology and Microbiology, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Principal Investigator and Researcher at the University of Nigeria Vaccine Research Centre, and a consultant hematologist at the University of Nigeria Veterinary Teaching Hospital. She has a PhD in Molecular Biology and Microbial Genetics from the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. Her current research focuses on the use of molecular tools and biotechnology to enhance diagnostics and therapeutics for neglected tropical diseases, especially zoonotic protozoan diseases (trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis).

Akin Jimoh, Nature Africa Chief Editor, found out more about Dr Chukwudi’s current research.

Chinwe Chukwudi 1:37

I started my career with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. And on graduation, because of my outstanding performance, I was immediately appointed to a faculty position. And then I got a Commonwealth scholarship for a PhD study at the University of London - The Royal Vet college. So, I started off my scientific career, my research career actually, on the very cutting edge, because I didn't do, you know, any meaningful research in Nigeria, before I left, I didn't do a master's degree. So, I didn't have a practical knowledge of the research terrain in Nigeria.

Akin Jimoh 2:16

Is it because there was no opportunity or, there's an opportunity out there that you need to immediately take?

Chinwe Chukwudi 2:24

So, I got the scholarship immediately I graduated. So, it was straight PhD. So, I went immediately. Why I was saying that was because when I came back after my PhD studies, was when I realized that I could not do anything, because there was nothing to work with. And I know some of my colleagues, they made fun of us and say those people that went to abroad to go and train, dadadadada they're useless, because the ones who grew in the system can afford to grow bacteria in their car as a incubator. I wasn't trained as such.

Akin Jimoh 3:01

You were glad you went out?

Chinwe Chukwudi 3:04

Yes, I was. But again, it was good and bad. It was good that I got the cutting-edge training. But it was bad because I couldn't practice it. I couldn't do anything. While my colleagues were happy to incubate bacteria in their car and report that, I can't do it. Because...

Akin Jimoh 3:23

Because you said what they were doing was not cutting edge?

Chinwe Chukwudi 3:26

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't make sense. Because you don't even know the temperature that you're incubating at. So, I started looking out for opportunities to improve myself here and there and do a bit of work here and there. I got an Erasmus Mundus fellowship to Spain; I got back a Commonwealth postdoctoral fellowship back to my university in London. But all of that was not going to satisfy what I wanted. So, in 2019, the NIH started a partnership with the African Academy of Science.

Akin Jimoh 4:04But before you get into that, what did you want?

Chinwe Chukwudi 4:08

So, I wanted to be able to work. But I wanted to work in Nigeria, I wanted to be able to work in Africa, because that's where the problem is. You see, we do all the cutting-edge research all over, in the West, they don't have anything more to research on. Many of them don't have a practical knowledge of the disease they are researching on. I've written several times about this, people are just there in the lab, you know, doing fancy stuff. But there is the problem, the practical problem is out there in the field. And it abounds in Africa, it abounds in Nigeria. But the people are not empowered to be able to solve that problem, which really would be an easy solution.

Akin Jimoh 4:50

So, you got the NIH?

Chinwe Chukwudi 4:52

So, the NIH started this program, which is a partnership with the African Academy of Sciences, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they called it the African postdoctoral training initiative. And the idea was to take a handful of promising researchers from Africa, train them, you know, with the best of the facilities they have at the NIH, and then send them back to be the nucleus to start off that culture of excellence in research in Africa. And then to maintain a long-term collaboration with their host Institute. So that was very appealing to me for the mere fact that it is not to go and train and then go back empty handed, they were going to equip us to start off our work in earnest.

Akin Jimoh 5:41

So, when was that?

Chinwe Chukwudi 5:43

We are the second cohort; they have just taken the third cohort. And that's what they want to do for now. And then they will review and see if they want to continue. But I think it is really very important. So, I got on that program. And part of the program is a two-year resident training here at the NIH in the US, where we work on that, some of the principal investigators of the NIH, you just find whoever does what you like. And then after the two years, we go back home and get support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to start off our research for another two years. The point being that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was going to provide like a seed grant for us to take off and then be able to become more competitive in grant writing.

Akin Jimoh 6:34

You were trained in Africa. There were opportunities, little or no opportunity, you went out, you got trained; you're advancing in your career. When you come back, there will still be some funding, that funding is not eternal.

Chinwe Chukwudi 6:51

Yes!

Akin Jimoh 6:52

What should be the next thing? Where should our government come in into this? Your first degree was paid for by your parents?

Chinwe Chukwudi 7:02

Yes!

Akin Jimoh 7:02

Then you have Commonwealth scholarship, then you have some other academic scholarship, opportunities and so on and so forth. What should others do within Africa?

Chinwe Chukwudi 7:15

We cannot continue to survive on just waiting on others. While we are the ones that have the problem. In my little capacity, I'm still trying to learn the terrain of science, communication, and all that, and, it is a lot, combining that with doing the actual science itself. I'm still trying to learn all of that, and all that engagement. But because of my current work, I have had to improve on that skill a lot. Because we have the problem. And we cannot continue to fold our hands and wait for others to solve our problems for us. It is not sustainable. Like I said, one of the things that attracted me to the APTI fellowship was the fact that they were going to empower you to be able to start off. My people, the Ibo people will say, to start a cry is very difficult. But when you have started, it keeps going.

Akin Jimoh 8:12

Yes, that is true. The water starts coming.

Chinwe Chukwudi 8:15

Because one of the things with young researchers, you need to boost some level of expertise. So, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was going to provide that seed fund to take off, and then you can be competitive enough to get other grants.

Akin Jimoh 8:31

Tell me, what are the problems that you can address, or your work has addressed so far? And what does the future look like?

Chinwe Chukwudi 8:41

So, let me get into what I chose to do for the APTI fellowship. First, the University of Nigeria, just before I got that fellowship, established a vaccine research center, it was just on paper. So, we have a building, well furnished, which is a great thing, if you know how difficult it is to get that. But there is not even anything that could be called laboratory in there. So, I took it upon myself because the director of the Center is my emeritus professor, and he felt like I could help get the place running and so I became his unofficial PA.

Akin Jimoh 9:20

So, there's a building?

Chinwe Chukwudi 9:22

Yes!

Akin Jimoh 9:22But equipment were booting somewhere else?

Chinwe Chukwudi 9:26

Exactly!

Akin Jimoh 9:27Yeah!

Chinwe Chukwudi 9:28

So, and then, because he has worked in trypanosomiasis field, during his active career, and being vets, we know that trypanosomiasis is one of the biggest animal problems we have and as well zoonotic. So, he said, he wanted us to start off looking into getting a vaccine for animal trips for trypanosomiasis, in general. So, for the APTI fellowship, one of the things I realised is that being a vet in the field, I know that there are many vaccines that failed in the field, even though they're supposed to be working where they are produced. And that is usually because the people that produce them don't take into consideration the different strains of the parasite, or the virus, whatever, that exists in some other places. Because these microbes are continually evolving, sometimes changing some of their genes to adapt to new environments, new hosts. And so sometimes people produce maybe in India, they produce a vaccine against one of the pox viruses. And then you bring it to Nigeria, or Parvo viruses is a typical case.

Akin Jimoh 10:44

The strain is different.

Chinwe Chukwudi 10:45

And you bring it to Nigeria, it doesn't work. But people still spend money and buy it because we don't have our own solutions. And then there are a lot of other issues, including cold chain issues that come about it. But that's not all. I think, from the scientific point of view, I think that taking into consideration the strains of the viruses, the strains of the pathogen, is something that is not very well done. And that is because there are no indigenous researchers who are doing these things, who are providing the information about their local strains. So, I decided for the APTI program, to look at the population genomics of the African trypanosomes that are causing the disease in humans and animals in our local environments, and then see how the human parasites relate to the animal parasites. How similar are they? How different are they? Is there possibility for change? So that was what I planned to do.

Akin Jimoh 11:52

Yeah!

Chinwe Chukwudi 11:53

Now in doing it, so what we wanted to do was to collect samples, pick up animal parasites, pick up human parasites, and then we can start genomic studies on them. But when I read up literature, on WHO website, it says that human trips has not been reported in Nigeria, in the past 10 years. There was only one reported case of human trips in Nigeria, and that diagnosis was made in the UK in 2016. So, from 2012, or 2013, till today, other than that one, there has been no report. So now, African trips is one of the Neglected Tropical Diseases, the NTD roadmap, they had planned to eliminate African trips as a public health problem in 2020, which is passed, and then planning to declare zero transmission by 2030. This is a global goal of WHO. Now they have other steps. If they don't find the disease in a country for some years, they will declare that country free from the disease.

Akin Jimoh 13:02

Yeah! Just like polio, just like guinea worm.

Chinwe Chukwudi 13:05

So, Nigeria is on the path to being declared free from African trips. So, I was worried that I wouldn't get human samples to do my population genomics that I plan to do. On a visit to Nigeria last year, I went to the lab where my PhD students were, my postgraduate students were working, and I was trying to also train them on some techniques. And they were screening for another protozoan parasite. My student just went to the hospital lab, the General Hospital in Nsukka. He just went to their diagnostic lab and collected samples that had been submitted from patients that needed to do lab tests. So, I said, we have these samples, while you screen for toxoplasma, which is what she was screening for. Let's screen it for trips, let's have an idea of whether we will. And in that one batch of samples of 96 samples, that was screened, we screened it with Elisa, and we had several hits that looked positive.

Akin Jimoh 14:08

Human samples?

Chinwe Chuckwudi 14:09

Human samples from the hospital.

Akin Jimoh 14:12

That we said one in 2016, was the only one that had been detected.

Chinwe Chukwudi 14:17

That has been reported.

Akin Jimoh 14:18

And this was last year.

Chinwe Chukwudi 14:20

This was last year. So, we screened it by Elisa. And we saw these ones that were looking like they are positive by Elisa. So, I asked them to send it over to me here; and they sent it here, and I started doing diagnostics. First, there is a huge challenge with diagnosis of trips. I don't want to go into that. Human trips, diagnosis, that's what I've been working on for the past one year. And my head is popping.

Akin Jimoh 14:49

I know. I know.

Chinwe Chukwudi 14:52

It's a huge challenge. But what I have done, was to use different approach. Because nobody will believe when you say that you got this number of positive human trips in one location that is not even considered a HAT endemic area.

Akin Jimoh 15:13Yeah!

Chinwe Chukwudi 15:14

Because when we talk about human trips in Nigeria, we talk about Boko, right?

Akin Jimoh 15:18

Yeah!

Chinwe Chukwudi 15:18

That's where everybody knows. And then sometimes we talk about Delta. These samples were not collected in those known locations, and every intervention that is done about HAT is done in those known locations. These samples were collected in Nsukka, which is outside of the known location in Nigeria. So, coming back here, I was able to use different diagnostic approaches. So, I've done serology in different ways, like four different tests, and I still consistently had positives, Actually, out of the 19 samples that they sent me, I have found about 8, are positive. 8 out of 92, that's about 4%. Even 0.1% is huge.

Akin Jimoh 16:13

8 out of 92.

Chinwe Chukwudi 16:13

Yes, that's about 4%. So, and the first thing is, it's unbelievable. Whenever you tell it to anybody, it's unbelievable.

Akin Jimoh 16:25

How can we change that?

Chinwe Chukwudi 16:29We have to be strategic in our thinking and be proactive. So, what I'm going to do now, I'm returning home in December, and NIH has given me a lot of equipment to set up my lab. And I'm going to actively start working on diagnosis and develop a new and reliable diagnostic method for this disease.

Chinyere Opia 16:52

Thank you, Akin and Dr Chukwudi for joining me today and thank you all for joining us in this episode of the Science in Africa podcast. If you are interested in finding out more about the important work being done by African research scientists, check out our Nature Africa website at nature.com/natafrica; and until next time, I am Chinyere Opia.