Neuroscientist elected to world’s leading brain body

“Very few people understand how the brain and nervous system work and the dangers to brain health, which is why the neuroscience community is the voice for this,” said Dr Duyilemi Chris Ajonijebu, a behavioural neuroscientist in the department of human physiology at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, South Africa.

Ajonijebu was elected by the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) Governing Council in Chicago, United States, as a new member of the IBRO Africa Regional Committee (ARC) on 6 October, starting in January 2025. IBRO is the leading global association of neuroscience societies, comprising five regional committees, notably Africa, Asia Pacific, Pan-Europe, Latin America and US-Canada.

Through the regional committees, IBRO promotes and supports all areas of neuroscience, with a primary focus on the brain and nervous system – its structure, how it develops, functions and degenerates. IBRO does this through neuroscience education, research, training programmes and outreach activities.

More research needed in Africa

“Every system in the body is linked to the brain which is an extremely complex organ,” said Ajonijebu, who started the Neuroscience Research Team at Nelson Mandela University when he took up his post there in 2019. “We have online seminars with renowned neuroscience researchers from within and outside Africa, we create awareness about the importance of brain health and provide a platform for postgraduate students and emerging neuroscience researchers to communicate their research findings and share innovative ideas.”

In Africa, there is a huge need for more research on the brain and neurocognitive disorders with which the continent is faced. “My ultimate aim in pursuing greater understanding of how disease affects the brain is to improve therapeutic outcomes for infected individuals,” he says.

“Two areas of my research focus on major neurocognitive disorders in Africa. The first is linked to drug abuse and the second is a blood and brain disease called Human African Trypanosomiasis, or HAT, that is associated with the Trypanosoma brucei parasite and tsetse fly. It is extremely common in Sub-Saharan Africa where the tsetse fly occurs.”

With African Trypanosomiasis, Ajonijebu said, most researchers look at the blood, but the impact on brain function is crucial. Symptoms include impaired memory function and anxiety-related behaviour. Once the parasite crosses the blood-brain barrier, there is limited understanding as to whether the damage can be reversed. The treatments currently available are costly, there are severe side effects and there is a propensity for drug resistance and relapse.

Focus on drug abuse, cognitive damage

Ajonijebu’s research team at Nelson Mandela University, together with the National Veterinary Research Institute and the Nigerian Institute for Trypanosomiasis Research, is working on closing the knowledge gaps and determining whether a prostacyclin with an anti-inflammatory effect that is very affordable can be used to reverse the associated cognitive damage.

With regard to drug abuse, he said: “We know that the dopamine reward pathway in the brain becomes impaired following prolonged exposure to cannabis and other drugs, and this leads people to taking more every time they want to get ‘high’,” Ajonijebu explained. “Together with Professor William Daniels at Wits University [the University of the Witwatersrand] and one of my PhD students, Musa Aminu, we are working on the neurobiological mechanism underlying Cannabis Use Disorder and its co-occurring psychiatric conditions. Our focus includes analysing the roles of selected microRNAs and exploring the potential of therapeutic agents for treatment.”

In addition to his research, and research leadership and development, Ajonijebu is committed to raising community awareness about the brain and is actively involved with several regional neuroscience societies in Southern Africa. He was part of the organising committee for the Southern African Neuroscience Society, or SANS, which hosted a highly successful regional neuroscience symposium in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, in July 2024.

For his leadership, SANS nominated him as the candidate to represent the SADC region on the IBRO-ARC committee, which subsequently led to his appointment. This puts him in a strong position to advocate for policy support and an exponential increase in impactful brain research in Africa. “I want to save lives, lighten the burden on health systems and promote brain health,” he said.