这位疟疾遗传学家正在培养下一代非洲科学家 | 盖茨笔记
Each year, I love sharing stories from around the world about the incredible work being done to fight malaria. Sometimes, though, those stories are best told firsthand. That’s why I invited Professor Charles Wondji—a malaria researcher, mosquito geneticist, and executive director of the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases in Cameroon—to share his.
每年，我都热衷于分享来自世界各地关于在抗击疟疾方面所做出的杰出工作的故事。然而，有时这些故事最好由当事人亲自讲述。这就是为什么我邀请了查尔斯·旺吉教授——一位疟疾研究者、蚊子遗传学家，以及喀麦隆传染病研究中心的执行主任——来分享他的故事。
I was born and raised in Cameroon, a country on the western coast of Africa where mosquitoes and the devastation they carry are part of everyday life. Malaria in particular has had a tragic impact on my family; I lost my younger sister to the disease when she was just five years old.
我在喀麦隆出生长大，它是一个位于非洲西海岸的国家，在这里，蚊子及其所携带的毁灭性疾病是日常生活的一部分。尤其是疟疾，对我的家庭造成了悲剧；我失去了年幼的妹妹，她在五岁时因疟疾去世。
My family was not an outlier. Malaria is the most widespread endemic disease in the country. Thirty percent of all medical consultations are for suspected cases of malaria while over twenty percent of visits to healthcare facilities here result in a malaria diagnosis. Throughout my childhood in the 1980s—before bed nets were commonly used—it was rare to hear of a family who hadn’t lost a loved one to the disease.
我的家庭并不是个例。疟疾是该国最为普遍的地方病之一。约百分之三十的就医咨询是因为疑似疟疾病例，而这里超过百分之二十的卫生设施就医最终被确诊为疟疾。在我上世纪八十年代的童年时代——在蚊帐普遍使用之前——几乎很少听说哪个家庭没有因为这种疾病失去过至亲。
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▲ 恩杜古一家住在我们位于首都城市雅温得外的埃伦代村野外站附近。我的团队会从他们家收集蚊子，以研究其对杀虫剂的抵抗能力。
Still, I consider myself fortunate, because I grew up in a household where education was valued above all else. My parents sacrificed what little they had to give me opportunities and instilled in me a sense of service and responsibility. So I made my way through Cameroon’s school system, eventually getting my PhD studying the genetic diversity of major malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. My goal was to reduce the burden of the disease—and to one day see it eradicated entirely.
尽管如此，我认为自己很幸运，因为我在一个重视教育胜过一切的家庭中长大。我的父母为了给我提供机会，奉献了他们微薄的一切，他们在我心中灌输了服务意识和责任感。我在喀麦隆的教育体系中逐步学习，最终获得了博士学位，并研究了主要传播疟疾的蚊子的遗传多样性。我的目标是减轻这种疾病的负担，并有朝一日看到它被彻底根除。
My experience in the lab of a French scientist in Cameroon opened doors to research opportunities in France and then the United States, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eventually, I settled at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) in the United Kingdom. My work had shown that the major malaria vector in Cameroon was in fact two distinct species of mosquitoes that had to be controlled separately; at LSTM, my postdoctoral research focused on mapping the genes of these mosquitoes to understand which ones conferred resistance to insecticides.
我在喀麦隆一位法国科学家的实验室中的经历为我带来了在法国和接下来在美国疾病控制与预防中心的研究机会。后来，我就职于英国的利物浦热带医学院（LSTM）。我的研究表明，喀麦隆的主要疟疾媒介实际上是两种不同的蚊子物种，需要分别控制；在LSTM，我的博士后研究重点是绘制这些蚊子的基因图谱，以了解哪些基因使它们对杀虫剂产生了抵抗力。
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▲ 在非洲，如果没有高效的研究机构，我们在抗击传染病方面所能取得的进展将受到限制。这就是我们为什么要成立传染病研究中心。
Currently, insecticide-treated bed nets are the method of malaria prevention recommended by the World Health Organization for most people living in high-risk areas. But certain mosquitoes are developing the ability to survive exposure to them. My goal is to improve the detection of insecticide-resistant genes by designing effective diagnostic tools—which will better track the spread of resistance in Africa while allowing the industry to develop more effective insecticides and, by extension, better insecticide-based prevention tools like bed nets.
目前，对于居住在疟疾高风险地区的大多数人，经杀虫剂处理的蚊帐是世界卫生组织推荐的疟疾预防方法。然而，某些蚊子正在逐渐产生耐受这些蚊帐的能力。我的目标是通过设计有效的诊断工具，提高对抗虫剂基因的检测能力，从而更好地追踪抗药性在非洲的传播，同时促使产业开发更有效的杀虫剂，进而提升驱虫蚊帐等杀虫剂为基础的预防工具的效果。
▲ 由于其低成本，经杀虫剂处理的蚊帐对于疟疾预防至关重要，但前提是蚊子对这些杀虫剂没有抵抗力。
The years I spent at LSTM were incredibly formative. I was part of a curious, welcoming culture that nurtured young scientists regardless of our backgrounds. I received mentorship opportunities that my career would look drastically different without. I went on to achieve independent research status upon winning a prestigious career development fellowship from the Wellcome Trust in 2008, which funded my work and enabled me to form my own team and lab—paving the way for me to receive subsequent senior fellowships and grants.
在利物浦热带医学院度过的那些年，塑造了今天的我。我融入了一个充满好奇心和热情的文化——不分背景，培养年轻科学家。正是在这里，我得到了导师制的培养机会，如果没有这些，我的职业生涯将会截然不同。2008年，我荣获维康信托基金会颁发的杰出职业发展奖学金，这成为我职业道路上的重要转折点。这项奖学金资助了我的工作，使我能够建立自己的团队和实验室，为我未来获得更多高级研究奖学金和资助打下了基础。
But in 2015, I decided to move back to Cameroon to continue my work, even though my home country lacked much research infrastructure to return to. My decision surprised many of my colleagues in the UK, but my reasoning was simple: I believe it’s important for “African science” to be conducted by African scientists—and what science is more African than the fight against malaria, given that over 95% of cases occur on the continent? I’m also passionate about identifying, nurturing, and mentoring young researchers from low- and middle-income countries who might otherwise be counted out, just like I could have been. I knew the best place to do that was to meet them where they already are—especially those who may not have had the chance to study abroad—and provide them opportunities in an environment familiar to them.
然而在2015年，尽管我的祖国缺乏很多研究基础设施，我还是决定回到喀麦隆继续我的工作。我的决定让我在英国的许多同事感到惊讶，但我的理由很明确：我认为“非洲科学”应该由非洲科学家来推动，而在整个非洲，95%以上的疟疾病例都发生在这片大陆上，还有哪项科学比抗击疟疾更具非洲特色呢？我还热衷于寻找、培养和指导来自低收入和中等收入国家的年轻研究人员，这些年轻人可能不被看好，而我自己也曾有过相似的经历。我知道最好的见面方式是在他们感到自在的地方与他们会面，特别是那些可能没有机会出国留学的人，并在他们熟悉的环境中为他们提供机会。
My return to Cameroon was made easier with the support of LSTM, which allowed me to maintain my research team, facilitated the ordering and shipment of reagents to my lab here, and more. But in addition to the administrative and equipment challenges, we soon reached a consensus that the dearth of efficient research institutions in continental Africa was limiting what we could do—and what research was being advanced.
利物浦热带医学院的支持使我更容易回到了喀麦隆。他们允许我保留我的研究团队，方便订购和运送实验室所需的试剂等等。然而，除了行政和设备方面的挑战之外，我们很快就认识到：非洲大陆上高效研究机构的匮乏限制了我们的工作范围以及推进的研究进程。
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▲ CRID成立于2017年，起初只有七名成员。而如今，我们已经发展成一个由120人组成的团队，其中包括20名拥有博士学位的科学家，以及来自整个非洲大陆的30名博士研究生。
That led me to establish the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases (CRID), a non-profit research institution in Yaoundé, Cameroon, with the goal of saving lives through quality research and capacity-building. Through support from the Gates Foundation, LSTM, the Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., and more, we’ve gone from a team of seven people to a team of 120 in just five years—including 20 PhD-level scientists and 30 PhD students from across the continent.
这促使我创立了位于喀麦隆雅温得的非营利性研究机构——传染病研究中心（CRID），其目标是通过高质量的研究和能力建设来拯救生命。在盖茨基金会、利物浦热带医学院、维康信托基金会和美国国立卫生研究院等的支持下，仅仅在五年内，我们的团队从最初的七人发展到了120人，其中包括20名拥有博士学位的科学家，以及来自非洲各地的30名博士研究生。
Today, CRID is also one of the few genomic reference centers in Central Africa, with state-of-the-art equipment that allowed us to surveil COVID variants in Cameroon and monitor the pandemic locally. In effect, investments that were made in the infrastructure to fight one type of health crisis—vector-borne infectious diseases—ended up being investments in the fight against another health crisis, too.
如今，CRID也是中非地区少数几个基因组参考中心之一，拥有先进的设备，使我们能够监测喀麦隆的新冠变种，以及在本地监控疫情。实际上，我们在基础设施方面为应对一类健康危机——媒介传播的传染病——所做的投资，最终也成为了应对另一类健康危机的投资。
▲ 在喀麦隆设立的国际研究机构意味着有抱负的科学家不必离开非洲，就能获得所需的培训和应得的机会。
At CRID, we are African scientists doing African science. We are studying—and working to end—the diseases that impact us and our families, on the ground in the places we are impacted instead of labs hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.
在CRID，我们身为非洲科学家从事着非洲科学。我们就地研究，并努力终结影响我们和家人的疾病，而不是在几百或几千公里外的实验室中。
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▲ 采集蚊子可能不是件“有趣”的事情，但对于那些曾失去亲人因疟疾而深知风险的人来说，这是一项重要且富有意义的工作。
I believe this approach is critical to make real progress and see results. The fight against mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria, yellow fever, and the dengue and Zika viruses—along with infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis—is a global fight. But with the right investment, mentorship, and opportunity, African scientists can and will continue fighting on the frontlines. After all, it’s truly the fight of our lives.
我相信这种方法对于实现真正的进步和取得成果至关重要。对抗蚊媒传播的疾病，如疟疾、黄热病，以及登革热和寨卡病毒，以及其他传染疾病，如HIV和结核病，这是一场全球性挑战。但在适当的投资、指导和机会下，非洲科学家就能够并将继续在前线进行战斗。总而言之，这是一场贯彻我们一生的斗争。
That is my story, but part of why I returned to Cameroon was to mentor the next generation of African scientists so they could write stories of their own. Here are three of them:
这就是我的故事，我回到喀麦隆的一部分原因在于指导下一代非洲科学家，使他们能够书写属于自己的故事。以下是其中三位：
Dr. Magellan Tchouakui, Cameroon, Medical Entomology and Vector Control
Dr. Tchouakui is an expert in assessing the impacts of insecticides on major African malaria vectors’ abilities to survive and reproduce. He’s passionate about putting that research to use, and leads the testing of many companies’ novel insecticide formulations to improve bed nets and indoor-residual sprays.
马吉兰·特舒阿奎博士，喀麦隆，医学媒介生物学与媒介控制
特舒阿奎博士是评估昆虫杀虫剂对主要非洲疟疾媒介蚊子生存和繁殖能力影响方面的专家。他充满热情地将这些研究成果应用于实践，并领导着许多公司的新型昆虫杀虫剂配方测试，以改进蚊帐和室内滞留喷雾。
Dr. Magellan Tchouakui, Cameroon, Medical Entomology and Vector Control
Dr. Tchouakui is an expert in assessing the impacts of insecticides on major African malaria vectors’ abilities to survive and reproduce. He’s passionate about putting that research to use, and leads the testing of many companies’ novel insecticide formulations to improve bed nets and indoor-residual sprays.
默尔西敏·库阿莫博士，喀麦隆，功能基因组学
库阿莫博士利用转基因等工具来“敲落”蚊子体内的特定基因，从而研究这些基因的功能，并了解哪些基因使得蚊子能够抵御杀虫剂暴露。她也是年轻女性科学家的榜样。
Dr. Leon Mugenzi, Rwanda, Molecular Genetics of Vectors
Dr. Mugenzi’s interest is in providing and improving the tools used to control the spread of malaria. During his PhD work at CRID, he designed the first DNA-based diagnostic tool to detect metabolic resistance in mosquitoes to insecticides, which helps prolong the effectiveness of bed nets.
里昂·穆根齐博士，卢旺达，媒介生物分子遗传学
穆根齐博士的兴趣在于提供和改进用于控制疟疾传播的工具。在CRID攻读博士学位期间，他设计了第一种基于DNA的诊断工具，用于检测蚊子对杀虫剂的代谢抵抗，从而有助于延长蚊帐的有效性。