Culled from Daily Trust Newspaper.
Nok is back in the news again with one of her sons receiving Nigeria’s National Merit Award for path breaking research, which discovered the gene responsible for sleeping sickness.
Nok in Kaduna state is famous for its terracottas which came to light in the 1940s, and brought the quiet community to global attention. Nok has also produced a famous son in the person of Professor Andrew Jonathan Nok, a Professor of Biochemistry at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, who was last year conferred with a national honour, being Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) by President Good luck Jonathan, which also carries with it a handsome $10 million. This is one of Nigeria’s highest honours. Professor Nok, who has had his entire education and training in Nigeria, and is in this sense, truly homemade or home grown, has many firsts to his name, and shows that what is World-Class and profound can also emerge from within the borders of our country. This is also a big plus for the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where Professor Nok was trained. Professor Nok is the only African so far to win the prestigeous Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience Research Award. Most previous winners of this award went on to win the Nobel Prize. He is one hundred percent a truly Nigerian and global Star, and his achievements are correspondingly, stellar. Having worked under eminent scholars at the Ahmadu Bello University, such as Professors Ukoha and Esievo, he has mentored and graduated 35 PhDs and 30 Msc students, and over 250 Bsc students. He has published over 105 journal papers in elite scientific international journals and has delivered over 30 invited lectures both nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of the 2009 NLNG Award for Science which is worth $50,000. But his greatness lies in his decades of work on the Tsetse fly and on Trypanosomiasis which has made him a regular presence in Laboratories as well as the Yankari Game Reserve, and the border between Plateau and Kaduna states, where the Tsetse fly is preponderant. His future greatness may very well lie ,not just in discovering a Vaccine for Trypanosomiasis which is just round the corner, and which would be not just an African but a global event, but also in Snake Venoms, another exciting research area of his, which he explained to Daily Trust in some detail. He is soft spoken, and of average height, but his ideas are giant-sized and far seeing. So the national honour is, in a manner of speaking, another first from Nok, the man himself. It is also another, in a series of firsts, for the community which goes by that name.
In his quiet office in early January, Professor Nok holds forth on Trypanosomiasis, a disease also popularly called Sleeping Sickness, which affects the poorer classes much more than the rich, and for which he is one of the leading experts on the globe. The disease affects 75 million cattle on the continent yearly, and he also adds that 7.5 million persons are at risk. The impact on the African economy must be huge given these statistics. Over the years he has done impressive work on the causative pathogen for Sleeping Sickness, and this has resulted in an effort to produce a Vaccine to tackle the scourge. His interest in Trypanosomiasis goes back a long time. According to him ‘I developed interest in Trypanosomiasis while in the University. We had quite a number of academic mentors at the time. I also further developed interest in the area in 1988, when I started my Doctorate.’ He tells Daily Trust that he and his team are just two to three years away from producing a Vaccine for the treatment of Trypanosomiasis. His words ‘I will say in the next two to three years, we should be able to get something quite concrete after completing all the trials. So far, we have been getting good results with regard to the gene eliciting a response. We should have a Vaccine for Trypanosomiasis in two to three years time. There should be a strong candidate for a Vaccine within this period.’
On his discovery which he spent the better part of twenty years researching into, he says this is the ‘discovery of the gene that is prominent in the etiology of Trypanosomiasis, otherwise known as Sleeping Sickness. The key pathology observed during the disease is the loss of Red Blood Cells, and we have been able link it up with the enzyme called Sialidase. This now gives us a leeway to develop a medication, in our own case, a vaccine to block the hydrolysis of red blood cells that would culminate into anaemia, and subsequent death of the organism or the animal’.On the parasite causing Sleeping Sickness, he says ‘It’s a blood stream parasite. It uses a system to break down the Red Blood Cells, and when these are broken down, the loss of Red Blood Cells manifests in anaemia. This means that you are losing so much of your Red Blood Cells, and because the Red Blod Cells are being lost, on account of the invading organisms, the host now becomes susceptible to any form of disease that comes. Anaemia in some animals can kill the animal within one week, depending on the pathogenic level of the parasite. It can rise to a chronic stage in a human being, and this begins to manifest with psychosis, and the psychosis brings about the comatose feeling. The comatose feeling is what is referred to as Sleeping Sickness.’ In sum he has discovered the gene responsible for the creation of Sialidase, an enzyme which causes Sleeping Sickness. Interestingly, he also invented the mathematical polynomial model to predict the extent of Red Blood Cell hydrolysis that can be exploited for early intervention and treatment, as indicated in the award ceremony booklet. Most of the research was done in Nigeria, specifically at the Ahmadu bello University. His words ‘Most of the research was done in Nigeria, and we have partners. After my degree I was visiting professor at Nagasaki University Institute of Tropical Medicine, and I did some of the work there. We still collaborate with Tokyo University.I also worked as Visiting Professor at the University of Kiel in Germany. Currently, we have collaboration with Yale University in America.Our research at ABU is supported by the German Research Foundation’.
On a related matter, he also tells Daily Trust that it is possible to create transgenic flies that would be useful in halting the sialination of parasites. His words ‘We should be able to produce genetically engineered Tsetse flies that can block the sialination of parasites.’ He says that genetically engineered Anopheles mosquitoes can also be created in the laboratory, and these would feed on the malaria parasite present in their system. When this happens the occurrence of malaria would certainly drop. He says that there are also other forms of Trypanosomiasis. His words ‘It may sound ambitious, crazy or scary to have some genetically engineered flies to be sent into the world to mop up Trypanosome parasites. If you want to genetically modify the Tsetse fly, the Trypanosome inside would be like food to it, because it would block the transmission process’. He adds, finally ‘Trypanosomes can be blocked from inducing anaemia. We reasoned, why don’t we block the activity of Sialidase, and see whether anaemia would be controlled? We tried it, and it worked’. According to him ‘Trypanosomiasis does not affect cattle alone.It affects domestic animals, and there is Fish Trypanosomiasis too. The disease affects animals in the wild, and there’s the likelihood that it may account for some of the silent ways in which some of the wild animals have been lost on account of Trypanosomiasis.’ He adds that the governments of Brazil and Argentina invest a lot annually in tackling what is known as American Trypanosomiasis. Of the NNOM which he received late last year, he says ‘It was a truly exciting experience. To know that highly accomplished, world-class scientists who have placed you under some assessment ,both locally and outside ,and at the end of the day they found you worthy of the award. When you look at the huge volume of people being considered, its exciting and refreshing that you are being recognised by your own, and that you are able to cross the threshold, and that your work is being carried beyond the shores of this country’.
Alongside ongoing studies seeking a Vaccine for Trypanosomiasis, is his research into snake venoms. His words ‘We are trying to look at the composition of the snake venom, and seeking to study some pathogenic factors in the snake venom. Then we are trying to see if we can develop a drug that can be used to treat snake bites’. He says that an international conference on Toxins based on work done at ABU on the snake venom, is scheduled to hold in Abuja or Kano later this year. Already, he has graduated five PhDs in the field of snake Venom, and some of them have done post-Doctoral studies in the United States. His family seem to be following in his footsteps, at least in terms of a common interest in Science. He has a daughter studying Chemical Engineering and another studying Electrical Engineering. They are in the abstract sciences, while he is in the Applied Human Sciences. His young son is just about to enter secondary school. The world of science might not have heard the last from the Nok’s and Nok, it seems.