Publications by authors named "Che Ngwa"

The lifecycle progression of the malaria parasite requires precise tuning of gene expression including histone methylation. The histone methyltransferase SET10 was previously described as an H3K4 methyltransferase involved in gene regulation, making it a prominent antimalarial target. In this study, we investigated the role of SET10 in the blood stages of in more detail, using tagged SET10-knockout (KO) and -knockdown (KD) lines.

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Background: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is one of the major pathogens frequently associated with severe respiratory tract infections in younger children and older adults globally. There is an unmet need with a lack of routine country-specific databases and/or RSV surveillance systems on RSV disease burden among adults in most low- and middle-income countries, including Cameroon. We aim to estimate the adult RSV burden needed to develop a framework for establishing an RSV surveillance database in Cameroon.

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Background: The European Union (EU) faces many health-related challenges. Burden of diseases information and the resulting trends over time are essential for health planning. This paper reports estimates of disease burden in the EU and individual 27 EU countries in 2019, and compares them with those in 2010.

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The transmission of malaria parasites to mosquitoes is dependent on the formation of gametocytes. Once fully matured, gametocytes are able to transform into gametes in the mosquito's midgut, a process accompanied with their egress from the enveloping erythrocyte. Gametocyte maturation and gametogenesis require a well-coordinated gene expression program that involves a wide spectrum of regulatory proteins, ranging from histone modifiers to transcription factors to RNA-binding proteins.

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Malaria as an infectious disease is one of the world's most dangerous parasitic diseases. There is an urgent need for the development of new antimalarial drugs. Natural products are a very rich source of new bioactive compounds.

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Background: Mental health disorders (MHDs) are considered a serious public health concern globally. The burden of mental health conditions is estimated to be higher in low-income and middle-income countries, including Cameroon, where reliable estimates are lacking. This review aims to synthesise evidence on the prevalence of MHDs, the effectiveness of mental health management interventions and identify risk factors for MHDs in Cameroon.

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Objectives: Within the framework of the burden of disease (BoD) approach, disease and injury burden estimates attributable to risk factors are a useful guide for policy formulation and priority setting in disease prevention. Considering the important differences in methods, and their impact on burden estimates, we conducted a scoping literature review to: (1) map the BoD assessments including risk factors performed across Europe; and (2) identify the methodological choices in comparative risk assessment (CRA) and risk assessment methods.

Methods: We searched multiple literature databases, including grey literature websites and targeted public health agencies websites.

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Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remains one of the leading threats to global public health and this may increase following COVID-19 pandemic. This is particularly the case in Africa where regulations on antimicrobial usage are weak. This protocol outlines the steps to undertake a systematic review to synthesize evidence on drivers of AMR and evaluate existing approaches to strengthening antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

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Prohibitins (PHBs) are highly conserved pleiotropic proteins as they have been shown to mediate key cellular functions. Here, we characterize PHBs encoding putative genes ofPlasmodium falciparum by exploiting different orthologous models. We demonstrated that PfPHB1 (PF3D7_0829200) and PfPHB2 (PF3D7_1014700) are expressed in asexual and sexual blood stages of the parasite.

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Malaria is one of the deadliest tropical diseases, especially causing havoc in children under the age of five in Africa. Although the disease is treatable, the rapid development of drug resistant parasites against frontline drugs requires the search for novel antimalarials. In this study, we tested a series of organosulfur compounds from our internal library for their antiplasmodial effect against asexual and sexual blood stages.

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Malaria is a persistent illness with a great public health concern. To combat this fatal disease, developing effective antimalarial medications has become a necessity. In the present study, we described the actinomycetes associated with the Red Sea soft coral sp.

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Malaria is one of the most important infectious diseases worldwide. The causative of the most severe forms of malaria, , has developed resistances against all the available antimalarial drugs. In the present study, the phytochemical investigation of the green seaweed has afforded two new compounds -, along with 4 known ones -.

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Background: Calculating the disease burden due to injury is complex, as it requires many methodological choices. Until now, an overview of the methodological design choices that have been made in burden of disease (BoD) studies in injury populations is not available. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify existing injury BoD studies undertaken across Europe and to comprehensively review the methodological design choices and assumption parameters that have been made to calculate years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) in these studies.

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S-adenosylmethionine synthetase (SAMS) is a key enzyme for the synthesis of the lone methyl donor S-adenosyl methionine (SAM), which is involved in transmethylation reactions and hence required for cellular processes such as DNA, RNA, and histone methylation, but also polyamine biosynthesis and proteostasis. In the human malaria parasite , SAMS is encoded by a single gene and has been suggested to be crucial for malaria pathogenesis and transmission; however, to date, SAMS has not been fully characterized. To gain deeper insight into the function of SAMS, we generated a conditional gene knockdown (KD) using the ribozyme system.

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CCCH zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) function mainly as RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and play a central role in the mRNA metabolism. Over twenty seven CCCH-ZFPs are encoded in the genome of the human malaria parasite , the causative agent of malaria tropica. However, little is known about their functions.

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Article Synopsis
  • Injury is a significant public health concern in Europe, with notable differences in injury death rates and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) across sub-regions and countries, particularly between Eastern, Central, and Western Europe.
  • The study analyzed GBD 2019 data from 44 European countries over 20 years, focusing on injury mortality and DALY rates by cause and sex while assessing inequalities based on country comparisons.
  • Findings reveal that Eastern Europe has the highest injury death rates (80 deaths per 100,000), while Italy has the lowest injury DALY rate, indicating that males experience greater disparities in injury impact than females.
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Soft corals and associated microorganisms are known to produce leads for anticancer drugs. Keeping this in mind, sp.; a Red Sea soft coral was investigated for the first time using the OSMAC approach.

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Background: Assessment of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) resulting from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) requires specific calculation methods and input data. The aims of this study were to (i) identify existing NCD burden of disease (BoD) activities in Europe; (ii) collate information on data sources for mortality and morbidity; and (iii) provide an overview of NCD-specific methods for calculating NCD DALYs.

Methods: NCD BoD studies were systematically searched in international electronic literature databases and in grey literature.

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Zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) are a large diverse family of proteins with one or more zinc finger domains in which zinc is important in stabilising the domain. ZFPs can interact with DNA, RNA, lipids or even other proteins and therefore contribute to diverse cellular processes including transcriptional regulation, ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, mRNA decay and stability. In this review, we provide the first comprehensive classification of ZFPs of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and provide a state of knowledge on the main ZFPs in the parasite, which include the C2H2, CCCH, RING finger and the PHD finger proteins.

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Global health concern regarding malaria has increased since the first report of artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) two decades ago. The current therapies suffer various drawbacks such as low efficacy and significant side effects, alarming for an urgent need of more effective and less toxic drugs with higher patient compliance. Chemical entities with natural origins become progressively attractive as new drug leads due to their structural diversity and bio-compatibility.

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The discovery and development of vaccines remain one of the major successes of global health with millions of lives saved every year through routine vaccination. Although vaccines provide a safe and cost-effective solution to vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs), VPDs are still a serious public health problem in most parts of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Asia. In this review, we discuss the burden of VPDs and vaccine coverage several decades after the introduction of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in Cameroon.

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Coculture is a productive technique to trigger microbes' biosynthetic capacity by mimicking the natural habitats' features principally by competition for food and space and interspecies cross-talks. Mixed cultivation of two Red Sea-derived actinobacteria, strain EG49 and sp. UR59, resulted in the induction of several non-traced metabolites in their axenic cultures, which were detected using LC-HRMS metabolomics analysis.

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Article Synopsis
  • The malaria parasite's ability to evade immune responses is largely due to antigenic variation driven by changes in the expression of surface antigens like PfEMP1.
  • Research has traditionally focused on the histone methyltransferase PfSET10 as crucial for parasite survival and gene regulation, making it a target for antimalarial strategies.
  • Recent findings contradict earlier reports, showing that disrupting PfSET10 does not affect gene expression or result in lethality, emphasizing the need for reevaluation of past research and the complexity of epigenetic regulation in pathogens.
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Fungal endophytes are a major source of anti-infective agents and other medically relevant compounds. However, their classical blinded-chemical investigation is a challenging process due to their highly complex chemical makeup. Thus, utilizing cheminformatics tools such as metabolomics and computer-aided modelling is of great help deal with such complexity and select the most probable bioactive candidates.

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