Cameroon

The objective of the Central African engineering schools of the CITAC project is to raise significantly quality standards of their engineering training, implicating actors from society and companies in the conception of adapted curricula to local labour markets.After a first Erasmus+ project called MOSE-FIC on which UCAC was an active member, the CITAC project shifts the leadership to Africa: UCAC will lead the change and brings in three new public and private HEIs from Cameroon and the DRC. As European Quality Standards were chosen as the cornerstone, European experts will provide their experience and insights to the actions decided on from African realities.The activities will lean on the competence-based approach putting the student in the centre of the process (8 curricula reengineered - min. 6 partners of the industrial environment providing insights).Students (3000 directly involved) will benefit from innovative learning methods such as Problem Based Learning, flipped classrooms… Virtual mobility will be supported by the creation of common distance learning activities (200h of e-learning created).Teaching staff (50 concerned-half of them will benefit from mobility) will acquire new know-how in defining learning outcomes and the way to align assessment and course content with them.The governance of the HEIs will be modernised by new rules of continuous enhancement such as assessment of the learning activities by the stakeholders and quality reviews.The local economies will benefit from engineers educated on a strong foundation of scientific and technical skills, combined with personal development work, including engineering ethics and experiences of responsibility in a social context. Thus, these engineers will be able to become leaders for the society, with greater freedom and personal charisma.Finally, for cross-fertilization purposes, the consortium members create and animate a contact cell with all HEIs in the fields of engineering in Central Africa

To target helminth elimination, a drug research and development (R&D) pipeline is needed to provide new chemotherapeutics that effectively eliminate or sterilize adult worms, thus bringing about the paradigm shift necessary to reach the 2030 SDG goals on health. Our consortium proposes to establish a R&D pipeline for anthelminthics targeting nematodes. The focus will be on soil-transmitted helminthiasis and onchocerciasis, since these infections are among the leading neglected tropical diseases. Ground breaking characteristics of the drugs developed within our project are that they will have a unique mechanism of action that, at best, will target multiple nematodes (pan-nematode) with an excellent safety profile, including no efficacy against non-targeted co-endemic species. We will benefit from collaborations with our industrial partners Bayer and Celgene providing preselected compounds to populate the early preclinical stages of the R&D pipeline. Compounds with the best profile will be progressed through preclinical studies. Corallopyronin A, a compound with proven efficacy against essential Wolbachia endosymbionts in filariae that has superiority to the gold standard doxycycline, excellent bioavailability and promising exploratory safety data will undergo state-of-the-art toxicity profiling to advance towards phase 1 trials. We will also evaluate oxfendazol and oxantel pamoate in clinical trials. They have already proven efficacious in animals or humans and will only require clinical trials according to current regulatory guidelines to be implemented. With this strategy, the consortium will ensure that a pipeline of drug candidates is available for treating onchocerciasis, especially should current candidates fail in upcoming clinical trials. Moreover, we will establish a much-needed drug R&D pipeline to treat soil-transmitted helminth infections for which there is currently neither a drug with good efficacy against all species nor any prospects on the horizon.

Tropical forests are one of the most important and diverse ecosystems on Earth; they act as a vast store for living carbon and, in doing so they help mitigate climate change by lowering atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. However, in recent years, research has revealed an increase in the rate of tropic tree mortality, with the consequence that the strength of the carbon sink provided by tropical forests is reducing. It is therefore vital that we understand why tropical trees die and how this might change with climate change. This project will provide the very first assessment of the number of trees that are killed by lightning in tropical forests. We know that lightning can, and does, kill large trees. We also know that lightning strikes are most powerful and frequent in the tropics. Our estimates indicate that lightning strikes could affect trees containing over 1 % of the tropical forest biomass every year. If all these trees died it would indicate that lightning was a major controlling factor of tropical tree mortality rates. Worryingly, research has predicted that the rates of lightning strikes will increase significantly with climate change. Based on the most recent climate model simulations, lightning could increase by as much as 22 % to 60 % by 2100; Such an increase in lightning could substantially increase tree mortality, altering forest dynamics, and reducing the efficacy of tropical forests as a carbon store. Despite the potential significance of lightning induced tree mortality, very little is actually known about this process. This lack of knowledge arises from the simple fact that it is impossible to predict exactly when and where lightning will strike. This uncertainty makes the effects of lightning extremely hard to observe. An added complication is that trees damaged by lightning may not show any external signs of damage, making it impossible to attribute their death to lightning solely on the basis of visual observations. We propose to address the knowledge gap about lightning induced tree mortality with a revolutionary approach to observing lightning strikes on trees. To study the impacts of lightning on trees we have selected two high biomass tropical forest sites located in regions of high lightning activity in Nigeria and Cameroon. Unlike past studies that relied on visual observations, we will, for the first time, deploy sensors on 20,000 trees to provide an unambiguous record of lightning strikes over a 4 year period. We have adapted a sensor commonly used by electrical engineers to monitor electrical current and lightning strikes (called the Rogowski Coil) to make it inexpensive and easy to deploy in the field in large numbers. We have successfully tested our new version of this sensor in Cardiff University's unique lightning laboratory. By tracking a large cohort of trees we will be able to capture a large number of lightning strikes on trees and study these individuals to work out what happens following a lightning strike. We will use this information to determine which trees are struck by lightning, what happens to surrounding trees, how many trees are killed by lightning and how the carbon storage of the forest is affected. We will combine this information with environmental modelling to determine how lightning damages trees and induces mortality. Finally, we will estimate the tropical loss of biomass due to lightning strikes, and predict how biomass loss will be influenced by climate change. This research will be the very first systematic study on the rates of lightning induced tree mortality in the tropics. This information is vital to our understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle and its continuing efficacy as a carbon sink. Therefore, this research is a priority for making informed global policy decisions on climate change mitigation.

We will establish for the first time in NTDs an adaptive clinical trial platform and improve clinical research infrastructure in four SSA countries. A drug acting safely on multiple helminths species would be a major leap to tackle NTDs and enable the WHO RoadMap (eWHORM). The cheap and freely-accessible pan-nematode drug oxfendazole (OXF) has such potential. Given the limited portfolio of anthelmintic drug candidates, eWHORM will assess its efficacy in an adaptive clinical trial for simultaneous evaluation against onchocerciasis, loiasis, mansonellosis and trichuriasis. Thus not only the largest group of NTDs, but also diseases that are not (yet) listed will be adressed. This design significantly reduces patient numbers, development time-frames and enables treatment of co-infections. Combined with our highly sensitive molecular tests, we provide a patient-centric approach providing tools for targeted treatment (test and treat) and precision mapping for elimination programs. Strengthening of early career scientists in SSA in all aspects of clinical trial conduct and research including data management, simulation and statistical analysis, will be fostered by introducing a master and PhD program, a mentorship program as well as several webinars. An open-source virtual training and assessment tool for diagnosis of NTDs will complement the knowledge transfer to remote areas in SSA. The consortium encompasses an interdisciplinary partnership from eight different countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Cameroon, Gabon, Tanzania, and DRC). Each group brings unique knowhow and recognized complementary experience to the project to ensure sustainable capacity building within SSA countries. Through joint development of – and training in – modern, regulatory clinical trial conduct, adaptive clinical trial design and state-of-the-art diagnostics, we will strengthen SSA researchers and clinicians to respond to persisting and future health challenges.