Professor Ayola Akim Adegnika

Country: Gabon

Institution: Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné

Research Areas: Immuno-epidemiology of infectious diseases

Lab Website: www.cermel.org

CERMEL was established 25 years ago to study tropical diseases in Gabon. It has since grown to become one of the leading African medical research institutions and developed extensive expertise in performing both large-scale field studies and clinical trials in accordance with current GCP & GCLP, as well as expanding its activities in immunology and other fundamental biomedical research. CERMEL has already played an important role in advancing our understanding of malaria as well as several neglected tropical diseases and has the ambition to become a leading research centre on the immunology, pathology, treatment and control of endemic infectious diseases in Central Africa, including malaria, helminths, tuberculosis and HIV. CERMEL possesses several dedicated Biosafety level 1 and 2 laboratories, including facilities for haematology/ biochemistry/ blood parasitology, stool/urine parasitology and immunology/molecular biology and a BSL-3 laboratory was opened in September 2017. The research laboratory at CERMEL is already well equipped with trained staff and instruments for performing a wide range of immunological assays, including class II biosafety cabinets for sterile sample handling, CO2 incubators for cell culture, real-time PCRs, a Luminex 200 system, two operational flow cytometers (Accuri C6 & Guava easyCyte 8), backed-up freezers and liquid nitrogen storage facilities.

The Leiden University Medical Center, Barcelona Institute for Global Health, as well as well as the University of Tübingen are major partners for immunological studies at CERMEL.