DrAnthony Afum-Adjei Awuah

Dr. Anthony Afum-Adjei Awuah is a member of the faculty at the School of Medicine and Dentistry and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Global Health and Infectious Disease Research Group at KCCR in KNUST. He is a scientific officer with the African Research Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (ARNTD), an affiliate member of the Africa Academy of Art and Sciences, and a member of the Africa Coalition for Epidemic Research Response and Training (ALERRT).

Anthony is an early-career researcher with experience in clinical research, outbreak response research, and community-based studies. As part of outbreak/pandemic response research, he is part of a team, responsible for the design, planning, and implementation of several ongoing outbreak response research in Ghana. This includes a seroprevalence study on COVID-19 (the SEROCOV study), a seroprevalence study on Dengue and other arboviruses in Ghana (the SERODEN study), outbreak response research on Lasser fever, investigating the epidemiology, clinical and immunological characteristics of Lasser fever in Ghana, and a seroprevalence study of Marburg, following an outbreak in Ghana (the SEROMARV study). He is also involved in a study investigating the prevalence of Aedes-born arboviruses in humans and non-human primates in national parks in Ghana.

Anthony’s research also includes clinical studies. He is a co-Investigator for the CCP study run in several African countries, investigating the clinical characterization of COVID-19, and a co-investigator on a study evaluating the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against severe acute respiratory infections hospitalization associated with laboratory-confirmed SARS-COV-2 in Ghana. He is also a co-investigator on a study investigating COVID-like illness in a prospective cohort on the COVID-19 post-acute condition. Anthony has experience in the conduct of trials in resource-limited settings. He is involved in clinical trials investigating both vaccines and drugs related to COVID-19. He is the lab coordinator for the VAT COVID-19 vaccine trial, co-investigator for ANTICOV clinical trial, co-investigator for the RECOVERY Clinical trial, and Principal Investigator for the ANTICOV-IMMUNO study. He is a former WHO/TDR clinical research and development fellow and is currently a steering committee member of the WHO/TDR Africa Regional Training Centre.

Anthony started his career with a degree in Biochemistry from KNUST and joined KCCR for his Ph.D. in Immunology, investigating the role of immune modulatory molecules in the immunopathogenesis of tuberculosis. After his Ph.D., he started his first Postdoc with KCCR developing an improved immunodiagnostic assay for the detection of tuberculosis in children. He has since had other postdoc training with Centre Muraz in Burkina and GSK vaccine s.r.l in Siena, Italy. He was part of the 2017 cohort of the Next-Generation-Scientist program to train young emerging scientists in clinical research at the headquarter of Novartis Pharma in Basel. Anthony has extensive experience in the design, planning, and implementation of GCP-compliant clinical research in resource-limited settings. He is a co-convener for the Skills for Excellence in Science Series (SEXISS) which designs and implements bespoke training using advanced pedagogy, problem-based and group-based learning for biomedical and health researchers, health professionals, and academia. He is currently the postgraduate coordinator for the Department of Molecular Medicine at the KNUST School of Medicine and Dentistry.