Researchers/Supervisors
Marcel Tongo Passo
SANTHE Collaborative Grant Awardee,
SANTHE Consortium Steering Committee Member,
SANTHE Site Principal Investigator
Centre de Recherche en Maladies Émergentes et Réémergentes (CREMER)/Institut de Recherches Médicales et d’Études des Plantes Médicinales (IMPM), Yaoundé, Cameroon
Marcel Tongo Passo returned to Cameroon in 2018 after his postgraduate training in South Africa to establish an independent research programme, build his own laboratory, and train PhD students.
His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of strain selection during HIV emergence, particularly within HIV-1 group M, which presents extraordinary genetic diversity and poses significant challenges for vaccine and cure development. He is especially interested in the Congo Basin, the epicentre of HIV-1 emergence, where extensive viral diversity includes multiple recombinant and unique strains. His work aims to understand how this diversity arises, spreads, and shapes local sub-epidemics, with the goal of informing broadly effective HIV vaccine and cure strategies.
In addition to HIV research, he is interested in monitoring viral zoonoses in the Congo Basin, a region with high levels of human–animal interaction and elevated risk of cross-species transmission events. This interest has been reinforced by the global impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its implications for zoonotic spillover into human populations.