James Ntambi, second from right, with members of his laboratory

What is the best way to encourage science in Africa?

Some African scientists come to the United States to train and then return to their home countries to teach and perform research (read about two examples here).

James Ntambi took a different approach - after receiving his Ph.D. he remained in the United States and now leads a lab at the University of Wisconsin, where he trains African scientists and teaches Americans what life is like in Uganda.

Born and raised in Mukono, Uganda, Ntambi studied biochemistry at Makerere University in Kampala. In 1980 he received a Fulbright award to attend graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore - with every intention of returning to Africa. For his Ph.D. thesis he studied the biology of trypanosomes, parasites that cause sleeping sickness (endemic in parts of sub-Saharan Africa).

After receiving his Ph.D. Ntambi decided he needed more research experience. He remained at Hopkins for a research fellowship in the lab of Dan Lane, studying how fat cells develop. Though seemingly unrelated, the way in which fat cells and trypanosomes mature and develop is similar, and Ntambi hoped to learn more about trypanosomes by studying fat - intending to return to Africa to study trypanosomes. 

At the end of his fellowship in 1989, however, Ntambi got a job as an assistant professor at Georgetown Medical School. He decided that he could improve science in Africa by remaining in the U.S. but returning to Makerere to teach.

With funding from the NIH, Ntambi and a colleague from the City College of New York took 10-15 students from minority institutions (historically black colleges) to Makerere University every summer between 1990 and 1995. Ntambi paired the American students with their Ugandan counterparts and taught them all basic molecular biology techniques. The NIH funding also allowed Ntambi to set up a small laboratory at Makerere.

Now a full professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Ntambi runs a similar program as part of a course called ‘international health and nutrition.’ Every fall, students in the course study public health issues that affect Africa - as part of their standard classroom work - and then spend three weeks in Uganda. Not just in Kampala, but also in rural Uganda, which comes as quite a shock to students from Wisconsin.

Ntambi stresses the value of teaching Americans about the difficulties people face in Africa. “After those three weeks, when they come back here, they are different people,” Ntambi told me. “They come back with a totally different perspective.”

Ntambi also hosts scientists from Uganda in his laboratory for three or four months at a time. These mini-sabbaticals allow Ugandan scientists to learn new techniques and develop networks with scientists in the U.S. In reality, most of the techniques they learn are conceptual - genetically engineering mice is standard practice at research institutions in the United States, but is not available in Uganda.

A visit to Ntambi’s laboratory is likely to encourage African scientists because of the exciting, cutting-edge work. Ntambi and his group recently showed that a protein in the skin regulates how the entire body stores fat. Mice genetically engineered to lack the SCD1 protein in the skin are lean, and do not become obese even when fed a diet high in fat. Surprisingly, the same is not true of mice genetically engineered to lack this protein in other parts of the body.  If you remove SCD1 from the liver or from fat tissue, the mice still became obese on a high-fat diet. It is the protein’s presence in the skin that regulates fat storage throughout the body.

We know the brain, the liver and the gut communicate with one another to monitor and control energy intake, storage and expenditure. Ntambi’s work suggests that the skin is part of this metabolic control apparatus as well. But while scientists have identified some of the hormones that the liver, brain and gut use to communicate with one another, it’s not known how the skin tells the body to store fat. Does the skin communicate with the liver or the brain or the gut, or directly with fat cells?

Ntambi is working to answer these questions. Meanwhile, he continues to lead students to Uganda, teaching African students that diet and exercise can prevent obesity and diabetes, stressing prevention over treatment. In Uganda, Ntambi explained, treatment is too expensive. Prevention is the only option.