NEWS Nelson O. Gekara is the latest addition as group leader at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden. He is from Kenya and loves new challenges, as the Nordic winter darkness, the snow and the start of a new research group in a new laboratory.
It was a lecture on HIV which inspired the young Nelson to change course. Raised in a small village near Lake Victoria, he had in the mid 90s as a 19 year old started to study Mathematics and computer science at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology - Nairobi, when he listened to an HIV researcher who talked about his research. This was just 10 years after the identification of HIV as the cause of AIDS by Dr. Luc Montagnier (Pasteur Institute, Paris) and Dr. Anthony Gallo (National Cancer Institute, Washington). Although already recognized as the biggest global health challenge, there were so many unkowns and an outline of the challenges then and how much could be achieved through research convinced him that a path leading to a career in infection research was the way to go.
But it was the first infectious disease in livestock which occupied him after completion of his undergraduate studies in biochemistry.. Just 23 years old, he began as a research assistant at the reknowned "International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which conducts research on livestock and pasture in Asia and Africa.
- I was curious to understand more about how the immune system works and studied mainly Trypanosoma, and Theileria parva infections in livestock. Trypanosoma is a parasite that causes sleeping disease also in humans. Theileria parva is also a parasite responsible for the cattle disease known as East Coast Fever. Both of these diseases are responsible not only for largest losse of livestock animals but also human morbidity in the case of Trypanosomiasis. At ILRI I was involved various projects aimed at developing vaccines as well as diagnostic methods for these diseases.
After two years of research Nelson moved on t the Institute of Animal pathology, University of Bern Switzerland, this time to work on the immunology of pregnancy in cows. In pregnant cows the immunsystem is supressed because the fetus would otherwise being rejected by the mother's immune system. The same relation exists in all mammals including humans. The molecular mechanisms behind a weakened immune system during pregnancy and how the weakened immune system of the pregnant mother copes with various infections was the focus of my research during this period..
But to work more with infectious diseases Nelson move on, to another institution, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany where he did Masters and then his Ph.D research for which he honoured withthe promotional price of cell biology and biomedical research in 2005.
Nelson recently moved to Umeå, and is currently building up its own research group at the Laboratory of Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) within the Department of Clinical Microbiology.
Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden is part of a Nordic partnership in molecular medicine with nodes in Helsinki and Oslo. It began with that the European flagship in molecular biology, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL, wanted to build a Nordic partnership with laboratories in Finland, Norway and Sweden. And the Swedish Research Council allocated around 78 million kr support for the university which showed to be a suitable partner and had the ability to build a laboratory in Sweden. All major universities with medical research participated in the contest. But Umeå University won. And since 2008, UmU builds the Swedish node in the partnership "The Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden", or MIMS.
Like the European flaggship with its headquarters in the Heidelberg, also Umeå University sets up a small "EMBL-laboratory" consisting of various research groups led by young outstanding researchers. Postdoctoral researchers who are recruited internationally have up to nine years time to have a own research group with graduate students and postdocs. When Nelson was recruited last spring, there were already five group leaders in place and in December number seven will set up her lab at the same institution. Except in clinical microbiology MIMS-labs are connected to the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Department of Molecular Biology.
- The EMBL partnership was a strong argument for me to come here. That you don’t need to struggle on with applications and financial uncertainty in the beginning and just can concentrate the first few years on building up your own research lab is incredibly good. And Umeå infection research is of course known throughout the world.
Nelson is a puzzle piece that fits very well into the established research landscape in Molecular Infection Research at Umeå University.
- I like to new experiences and challenges and Umea happens to present both of these "says Nelson. “Umea is different from any other places that I have lived in before. Talk about the nightless summer days which I experienced when I just moved over here to the freezing sunless winter days which I am living through now. This is all new as much as it is a positive challenge. Workwise, the opportunity for group leader position based on the EMBL model was particularly an attractive one. The EMBL model is so far one of the most very successful model of grooming your career researcher life sciences. This is evident from the many leading researcher worldwide who started their career as group leaders at EMBL," says Nelson.
That you don’t need to struggle on with applications and financial uncertainty in the beginning and just can concentrate the first few years on building up your own research lab is incredibly good. And Umeå infection research is of course known throughout the world. In the few months that I have been here, I have been fortunate enough to meet and discuss with other fellow researchers in Umea about their work. My background in immunology and in particular host-microbial interactions complements very well with the interests of many of the research groups in Umea which is why and I am very optimistic about research possibilities and collaborations.
- As I said, I am focused on understanding how infectious agents interact with the host, and immune responses generated against such agents. In this regard I am interested in understanding the mechanisms of microbial virulence factors that enables the pathogens to invade and subvert the immune system. Upon infection the host elicits an immune response directed at the invading microorganisms.
Such immune responses must however not be too strong lest they cause self destruction such as during sepsis or other hyperinflammatory diseases. Understanding the mechanisms which govern the regulation of the immune responses and how the breakdown of such mechanisms lead to inflammatory disease will be the interest of lab I am in the process of setting up.
So far I have mainly been studying mostly immune defense against Listeria, a bacteria found in dairy products and causes blood poisoning and meningitis. In particular, pregnant women and persons with compromised immune systems are at risk. In addition, I have also been immune responses against other pathogen such Salmonella, the bacteria which causes typhoid and viral infections such as vesicular stomatitis virus which causes acute disease in livestock and occasionally in human.
Certainly there is lot that remains to be unknown about these and other microbes interact with host and hope to generate new information which will be harnessed towards therapeutic strategies against infection and inflammation.
- As far as setting up the lab, everything is going on smoothly and I feel grately indebted to my colleagues in MIMS and Clinical Microbiology who have been very helpful in this regard. I am now looking forward to receiving my co-workers scheduled to start working in the lab in January. There was some setback with regards to obtaining the Swedish personal number. It has taken over four and half months. This I had not anticipated. But luckily this week I finally got it and now that I have been “entered into the system” I could start looking for the apartment of my choice, open bank account, sign contract for mobile phone, internet connection…
Nelson can tell his own story about how difficult it is to move to Sweden, especially when you have a passport from Kenya. And perhaps also for the Immigration services the Kenyan who has been living for such a long time in Germany and moved to the new northern Sweden.
- It takes maybe a week to adjust, but then I feel there at home again.
And it seems that that is precisely what is Nelson's talent: to blend in and completely open to new challenges and new experiences. He who speaks several African languages, English, German, and now he attends the Swedish course at the Chemical Biological centre.
- Sure! The country has so many problems with infectious diseases. If I could help with my skills, and inspire others to join research all be better.
Photos by: Johan Gunséus
MIMS - Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden
Editor: Eva-Maria Diehl