Affiliateship: 2020-2024
Cohort 5
Country (Nationality)
Madagascar
Discipline
Medical & Health Sciences
Bio
Niaina Rakotosamimanana has a sandwich PhD in microbiology obtained at the Sorbonne University, Paris France and the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar. After several positions as postdoctoral fellow and researcher in France and Madagascar, He was recruited at the Pasteur Institute of Madagascar where he has been leading the Mycobacteria Unit since May 2016. He is in charge of the tuberculosis research program which includes translational and operational researches that aimed to develop new TB diagnostic tools and to perform drug resistance surveillance in collaboration with the National Tuberculosis Control Program of Madagascar.
He has track record in cohort studies, bacterial immunology and molecular epidemiology. His main achievements are the description of human blood markers of progression from latent to active tuberculosis as well as the influence of the TB clinical strains diversities on the human host responses and clinical issues. His lab has international collaborations with the most prestigious research institutions in Africa, the USA, the UK and Europe. He is involved in different research grants to lead innovative tuberculosis research projects for the use of new technologies for TB healthcare delivery in remote settings, the use the portative NGS sequencers to search for drug resistance in situ and different immunological tools to evaluate new TB vaccines and treatments through different clinical trials.