PROFILE OF MR. REUBEN AYIVOR-DJANIE
Mr. Reuben Ayivor-Djanie is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, School of Basic and Biomedical Sciences. He is a Biochemist by training with specialties in the molecular immunology of infectious diseases. He teaches causes in Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology to Biochemistry Majors as well as Medical and Allied Health trainees. He has served in various capacities and on various committees in the University. He served as the UTAG-UHAS General Secretary for two terms, from 2014 to 2018. He is currently the President of UTAG-UHAS.
Mr. Ayivor-Djanie’s research interests are at the interphase between cancers that occur in immune cells and how infectious pathogens contribute to genomic instability in these cells. Specifically he is interested in how parasites like Plasmodium falciparum and Helicobacter pylori and viruses like EBV and HPV predispose infected individuals to cancers associated to these pathogens. For his PhD dissertation, he studied how exposure to Plasmodium falciparum (malaria), predisposes B-lymphocytes to genomic instability, through the aberrant expression and activity of Activation-Induced cytidine deaminase (AID).