Researcher profile

Elvis Banboye Kidzeru

I am Banboye Kidzeru Elvis, I was born and grew up in Nso, a village in the Northwest of Cameroon where I went to the Government Nursery School and started primary school in Government Primary School (GS) Tobin. I later completed primary in Catholic School (CS) Azeri Small Mankon, and secondary and high school at Government Bilingual High School (GBHS) Bamenda in the nearby city of Bamenda where I spent most of my childhood. I realized that a lot of people were dying of infectious diseases because they were not diagnosed early enough and not because there was no treatment available. This really challenged and drove me to choose a field where I could impact populations’ health. I am a medical laboratory scientist by training and specialized in immunology, and I am an honourary research officer at the microbiology, infectious diseases, and immunology laboratory (LAMMII), CRSPP, IMPM in Cameroon. As you will see below, my journey has been marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge, an unquenchable curiosity, and a passion for making meaningful contributions to the world of health and sciences. I graduated from University of Buea (UB) in 2008 with an Honours degree in laboratory medicine i.e., Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences (BMLS). I have worked in several diagnostic laboratories in Cameroon. I was a research assistant focusing on Hematology and blood transfusion sciences at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa. Further, I completed an MSc (Med) in 2013, then I received a doctorate in Clinical Science and Immunology in 2016 at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. During this time, I was a visiting scientist at the Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR) in Washington State, USA. My MSc (Med) and PhD projects investigated the impact of HIV-exposure and myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) on vaccines immunogenicity in HIV-infected and uninfected South African mothers and their infants. I further completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stellenbosch University in South Africa optimizing the Seahorse XFp Bioenergetic Analyzer to evaluate the immune metabolic changes that may occur in regulatory pathways mediated by TB and HIV. Recently, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Hair and Skin Research Laboratory (HSR Lab), in the Department of Medicine of the University of Cape Town assessing immune and molecular markers for keloid disease by employing proteomics and transcriptomics techniques. I had earlier registered as an intern Medical Scientist in July 2018 (Category: Immunology) with the Health Professional Council of South Africa (HPCSA; Registration number: MSIN0004529). Parallel to my fellowship at HSR Lab, I completed a two-year internship training (April 2020 – March 2022) at the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) Tygerberg Microbiology and Immunology Laboratories within the Division of Medical Microbiology and Department of Pathology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, as requirement to complete registration with the HPCSA, coupled with a comprehensive Portfolio of Evidence (PoE) report submitted to the HPCSA. In addition, my current role at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, also in collaboration with the Department of Medicine of the University of Cambridge in the UK as visiting research scientist, involves the use of advanced techniques such as laser capture microdissection (LCM), confocal microscopy, single cell RNA sequencing, several spatial transcriptomics techniques including Visium and Curio probe based, and Xenium in-situ gene expression analyses. Through these methods, I have had the privilege of participating in the development of new tools for studying immune responses in kidney dysfunctions, aiming to bridge the gap between single-cell sequencing and tissue-level understanding.