Position in DATURA: WP4 Biological investigations
Job title: Cell Biologist
Home Institution: l’Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM)
ResearchGate link
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Dr Jean-Pierre Molès has strong expertise in laboratory management and implementation. Over the last years, he has created/managed the wet laboratory of the UMR1058 research unit (Montpellier, France). He also coordinates translational laboratory activities in the field of pathogen transmission in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) settings. Here lab procedures (techniques, sample flow, quality controls and traceability) are tested, evaluated, modified and approved in a highly interactive expertise exchange among lab personnel.
His expertise is attested by:
- The laboratory coordination of projects conducted in Africa.
Currently, he is involved in four projects that are performed in African countries. They are all focusing on the mother-to-child transmission of HIV through breastfeeding. One is an epidemiological descriptive study (South Africa), the three others clinical trial (phase 2 or phase 3, Burkina Faso, South Africa and Zambia) including one funded by EDCTP2 (PROMISE-EPI). During the last 2 years, 3 main projects also conducted in Africa ended, 2 of them were observational studies, the last one an evaluation of new diagnostic tools of TB in children infected or not by HIV (funded by EDCTP, PROMISE-TB).
- The lab coordination in project conducted in Vietnam
He has been involved in a collaborative research in a Vietnamese context over the 5 years. These consist of three interventional trials among injecting drug users aiming at controlling the HIV or HCV transmission within the drug user community.
For all these projects, Molès and his team collect human samples. These are used to build sample repositories, which are then used in ancillary studies or for future research. Taken together, these repositories encompass more than 250,000 tubes and more than 50,000 dry blood spots. Molès supervises the use of these samples from their storage to their shipment in compliance with local regulatory rules. The implementation of lab activities in LMI countries does not frequently follow the procedures used in France. Finding solutions to obstacles/challenges in these contexts are part of the challenges he has resolved in these types of projects.