“I always wanted to be in the oven and the mill; Be useful and contribute as much as possible to the relief of the pain and the health of people. ”
This is Bruno Nkambeu’s speech, while this week is undergoing the obtaining of his doctorate in veterinary medicine focused on the discovery of analgesic drugs.
Under the supervision of Francis Beaudry, professor in the department of veterinary biomedicine at the University of Montreal, Bruno Nkambeu has designed a unique method to study nociception – the physiological process by which the nervous system detects a potentially harmful stimulus and transmits information to the brain.
To get there, he first made a master’s degree in biology of animal organizations in his country of origin – Cameroon -, a certificate in technology and innoceity of food, then a master’s degree in veterinary pharmacology. The objective: to discover ways of eating pain in animal models and, ultimately, in humans.
“Many pain drugs produce outbuildings that can destroy lives, families. Being myself, I myself, I know that this discipline can, under certain conditions, strengthen the back muscles, but that it is also accompanied by back pain. I always said to myself that it was necessary to find other ways of doing things to relieve the pain, ”says the doctoral student.
Veterinary medicine thought for humans
Bruno Nkambeu is therefore interested in pain drugs. If it is associated with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Montreal, it is because it called on an animal model – more precisely the worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) – to develop new pain relievers.
C. elegans is a tiny nematode which has more than 7,600 genes in common with the human genome, in addition to presenting a structure and an operation which are similar to those of mammals.
In his thesis, the scientist has developed a technique to stimulate nociceptors (harmful stimulus receptors) in C. elegans, which are homologous of pain receptors in laboratory animals, and then be able to test a variety of potentially analgesic molecules.
“For example, if we have a pool of 1000” potential “molecules to test, that would mean that it would take a lot of animals to put them all at test, which is questionable from an ethical point of view. But with C. elegans, It is possible to make a rapid screen, to retain only the most promising molecules and thus accelerate the discovery of new drugs, ”he says.
Since the nociceptors of the worm react pharmacologically similar to those of the species used in the search for drugs, this approach contributes to greatly limiting the use of animal experimentation in the laboratory.
A standard of science
Since he was very small, Bruno Nkambeu has been interested in science and research. While he became a researcher himself, he now wishes to communicate this passion to the younger generations.
“The passion for science comes when the first experience is successful,” he believes.
Animated by this desire to share, he is currently working to simplify his technique of stimulation of C. elegans To be able to present it in secondary schools or CEGEPs. “This nematode is easy to handle and the thermal stimulation material is simple. For stimulation equipment, I would like to create an even more advanced version if I have the necessary financial support. Then, it will only be to think about a way of automating using artificial intelligence C. elegans», Bruno Nkambeu Rescue.
