Research and University Cooperation

LECTURER-RESEARCHERS FROM DSCHANG AND QINGDAO READY DO THEIR JOINT DUTIES

Dschang, UDs/SIC – 10/09/2024. If one of the priorities of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the University of Dschang (UDs) and Qingdao University (UQ) on September 5th, 2024 in Beijing, China is the implementation of joint scientific projects, we can already see in the relations between the lecturer-researchers of the two institutions a collaboration which lays the foundation of this joint work. Prof. Gang Li (MC), serving at the Faculty of Pharmacy of UQ, works with Prof. Rémy Bertrand Teponno, serving at the Faculty of Sciences of UDs.

The two met in 2015 at the Dortmund University of Science and Technology in Germany. The first was finalizing his PhD work while the second, recipient of a grant from the Humboldt Foundation, was carrying out post-doctoral research work. This is how the Cameroonian contributed to the advancement of the Chinese’s work.Since then, the two lecturers-researchers have maintained scientific contacts leading to co-publications (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioorg.2024.107572). At the time when UDs signed the MoU with UQ, they were awaiting the result of an academic mobility project submitted by Prof. Gang Li to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

This project should result in the equipment of the latter’s laboratory and the missions of research teams to Dschang and, conversely, to Qingdao. Of course, the Chinese side is represented by Prof. Gang Li and the Cameroonian side by Prof. Teponno.

This is the updating of a scientific partnership already about ten years old.Rémy Bertrand Teponno and Gang Li are basically chemists, working in the field of natural substances. Prof. Gang Li was looking for bioactive compounds produced by mushrooms in his thesis work, defended in 2016. His concern ties with the projects of Prof. Teponno whose work focuses on the research of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants and mushrooms from Cameroon. It is with projects in this field that the Cameroonian won the Humboldt scholarship in 2015 and, in 2017, the TWAS-Atta-ur-Rahman Prize in chemistry. This prestigious international award thus recognized work leading to the discovery of compounds with antimicrobial activities from Dioscorea bulbifera, the scientific name for what is commonly called “wild danas” (bitters). This discovery is being used in the development of antibiotics to combat certain diseases.UDs and the UQ thus have, through their lecturers-researchers, a solid basis for a fruitful collaboration. We hope that the coming months will see the submission, by the teams of the two institutions, large-scale projects necessary for the development of mankind./