News
Launch of a European project on tuberculosis in the Mediterranean region9/03/2010 This month, the EUMEDNETvsTB project will officially begin, bringing together the Institut Pasteur and members of the International Network to improve tuberculosis and research and control in the Mediterranean region. Scientists will aim to understand the genetic diversity and drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, and its interaction with the human immune system. |
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Members of the International Network in the consortium include the Stephan Angeloff Institute in Bulgaria and the Instituts Pasteur in Tunis, Algeria and Guadeloupe, in addition to outside partners in Germany, Spain and Morocco. The scientific coordinators are Brigitte Gicquel of the Institut Pasteur and Helmi Mardassi of the Institut Pasteur in Tunis.
The €1 million project is financed by the European Commission under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
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Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is the honorary president of Instituts Pasteur worldwide23/02/2010 Françoise Barré-Sinoussi has accepted the honorary presidency of the Institut Pasteur International Network, thus bringing a major contribution to supporting its global activities, developing collaborations and creating new partnerships.
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She was in Tunis 18-19 February 2010, where she met with the ministers of higher education and research and public health. She also participated in the annual scientific conference of the Tunisian Immunology Society on the invitation of the Institut Pasteur in Tunis.
She will soon visit Cambodia and then Shanghai for the Universal Expo, followed by Hong Kong at the end of the year.
First cases of A/H1N1 flu diagnosed in Niger18/02/2010 The first cases of flu associated with the A/H1N1 virus have been detected in Niger by the CERMES, the only structure capable of diagnosing the virus in the country. Samples from five patients, all children aged less than seven years, were diagnosed at the CERMES and the results were confirmed by the Institut Pasteur on 16 February 2010.
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The surveillance system became operational shortly before the announcement of the pandemic of A/H1N1 flu thanks to a multicentre project organised by the Institut Pasteur International Network and financed by the French Ministry of Health.
The Nigerien Ministry of Public Health has take measures to ensure appropriate care for patients (training health workers, purchasing stocks of Tamiflu, etc.) but the potential impact of recent political evolutions in the country remains unclear.
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Biogeographic origins of the cause of cysticercosis in Madagascar17/02/2010 Scientists from the Institut Pasteur in Madagascar, working with researchers from the Institut Pasteur and other partners, described in a recent article the origins of the pathogen responsible for cysticercosis in the country. |
Cysicercosis is a parasitic disease of the central nervous system caused by the larvae of Taenia solium (pork tapeworm), which infects 16% of the population of Madagascar, with even higher prevalence rates in regions heavily involved in livestock farming.
According to the results of the study, Taenia solium has multiple and ancient origins that precede the domestication of the pig in Madagascar. Pigs are the animal most often associated with the transmission of the disease.
Meeting at IP Tunis on the serach for a vaccine against leishmaniasis11/02/2010 The third meeting of the European project RAPSODI, which aims to develop a candidate vaccine targeting most species of Leishmania, at the origin of the human disease leishmaniasis, took place 28-30 January 2010 at the Institut Pasteur in Tunis. |
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This conference allowed researchers to advance toward the definition of procedures and methods for future clinical trials. Other presentations covered the epidemiology and diagnosis of the disease, whose visceral form is almost always fatal.
The project’s participants include research institutes and other organisations located in endemic countries such as Tunisia, India and Peru. The project is financed by the Seventh Programme Framework (FP-7) of the European Commission.
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Scientific conference on hepatitis C in Egypt10/02/2010 The third annual scientific conference of the ANRS research site on viral hepatitis took place on 23-24 January 2010 in Cairo (Egypt). This conference provided an overview of research projects currently underway in the country, where hepatitis C prevalence rates are the highest in the world.
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The ANRS site brings together several Egyptian and French research teams and is coordinated by Arnaud Fontanet (Institut Pasteur) and Mostafa Kamal Mohamed (Ain Shams University in Cairo).
