PROLIFICA Students

 

Zak%20profile%20picture  Mr Zakary Warsop (Imperial College London)

Zakary Warsop is a medical student at Imperial College London completing an intercalated BSc in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He worked at the MRC unit The Gambia in Spring 2022 to investigate the duration between Hepatitis B diagnosis and the initiation of care for his dissertation. Since returning to the UK he has continued to work with the PROLIFICA team.

 

Amy%20Ceesay%20Profile  Ms Amie Ceesay (MRC The Gambia Unit, University of The Gambia)

(Universté de Lyon 1-UCLB, Institut National de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM-Cancer Research Centre of Lyon-CRCL)

 Ms Amie Ceesay has been awarded a PhD fellowship by Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to pursue a degree in molecular virology at UCBL in CRCL laboratory in France. Her research is based on validation and simplifying diagnostic assays that are feasible and affordable for African setting. The techniques could be used to determine the rate of chronic hepatitis carriers’ progression to liver cirrhosis, fibrosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) at the earliest possible time.

 

Nora%20Schmit%20Profile Dr Nora Schmit (Imperial College London, UK)

Nora completed her PhD on modelling the impact and cost-effectiveness of treatment interventions for hepatitis B in sub-Saharan African at Imperial College in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. In her modelling analysis, she uses data from the PROLIFICA study to investigate potential strategies for the implementation of a hepatitis B screening and treatment programme. Nora is now a Research Associate at Imperial College London based in the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis.

 

 Jin%20Kim%20Profile Dr Jin Kim (Clinical Research Fellow, Imperial College London, UK)

 Jin Kim is a clinical research fellow at St Mary’s Hospital. He has been involved in global health projects relating to chronic liver diseases and communicable infections in resource-limited regions, with ongoing work to improve the care cascade of people living with chronic viral hepatitis in Tanzania. 

 

Damien%20Leith%20Profile Dr Damien Leith (Registrar, Glasgow, UK)

Damien Leith is a gastroenterology & hepatology registrar based in Glasgow, Scotland. Damien worked with the PROLIFICA group in The Gambia from September 2018 to July 2019, assisting with clinical assessment and data collection for the MATCH-B study. He is currently working with the group on the Occult Hepatitis B systematic review and hopes to undertake a PhD with Prof Lemoine in the future.

 

Liem%20Binh%20Luong%20Profile Dr Liem Binh Luong (PhD Candidate, Pasteur Institute, Paris, France)

Dr Liem Binh Luong Nguyen (MD, MPH), is an infectious disease specialist which research focuses on modelling and cost-effectiveness analysis of prevention interventions. He is currently working on a model-based analysis of treatment allocation strategies for HBV chronic infection in The Gambia.

 

Damien%20Profile Dr Damien Cohen (Cancer Research Centre of Lyon)

Damien Cohen worked as a project manager for the ANRS and completed his PhD in virology at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon (CRCL). His research evaluated the viral variability of Hepatitis B virus and various environmental factors and their association with liver cancer in Gambian and Senegalese patients. Damien is now an innovation and funding consultant at EVOLY Consulting.

 

Raya%20Toye%20Profile Dr Rayana Toyé (Iressef, Sénégal)

Rayana Toyé was a PhD student in Molecular Biology at the Institut de Recherche en Santé, de Surveillance Epidémiologique et de Formation (Iressef). After graduating from high school in Niger where she is from, she completed her master’s degree in Biology in Burkina Faso with internships at the Centre Muraz research institute. She worked on the ANRS 12357 project on Senegalese patients from Prolifica. The frame of her thesis was developed at Iressef in Dakar and included a fourteen-month stay at Inserm U1052 in Lyon. Her research focused on HBV variants and biomarkers related to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-infected patients, such as expression of mi-RNAs and TP53 mutation related to exposure to aflatoxin B1 (AFB1). For this latter part, she carried out periods of work at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) whose activities are strongly linked to the detection of exposure to AFB1. She also worked on the molecular characterization of HBV in Senegalese HIV-infected children. Rayana is now a Postdoctoral Scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

 

Kyoko%20Yoshida%20Profile Dr Kyoko Yoshido (Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Japan)

Kyoko Yoshida was a medical student of Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan. She worked with PROLIFICA at Imperial College London in 2018 and MRC Unit the Gambia in 2019. After her return to Japan, she continued her collaboration with the team and completed systematic reviews.