Coumba Touré Kane

Prof. Coumba Touré Kane is a PharmD, Ph.D., Full Professor in Microbiology, Bacteriology and Virology at Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Odontology at Dakar Cheikh Anta Diop University Senegal.

Since 2019, she is the First Adviser in charge of partnerships, research and innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education Research and Innovation of Senegal.

She is also the coordinator of the Inter-Country Quality Node on Higher Education and Scientific Research (ICQN-HESR) of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).

Coumba is the Scientific Director and lead of the Molecular Biology platform at the Institut de Recherche en Santé, de Surveillance Epidémiologique et de Formation (IRESSEF). Her research interests include the molecular epidemiology, physiopathology and Drug Resistance of HIV and many other infectious diseases agents.

She assisted in the implementation of alternative tools for the virologic monitoring of HIV infected patients, including the DBS (Dried Blood Spot) for Viral Load and Genotyping assays. She has contributed to the documentation of the molecular epidemiology of HIV in several African countries. She also contributed to the scaling up access to Viral Load (VL) and EID (Early Infant Diagnosis) in many countries.

Coumba oversees the EID and VL panel production and management for many West and Central in Africa. As a lab expert, she has conducted many evaluations in African countries. She is involved in many research projects on infectious diseases and Cancers.

Coumba authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. She is a member of many scientific boards.