January 2023 Newsletter: Pharmalys Celebrates 10 years of Operations in Africa

Pharmalys is Celebrating 10 years of Operations in Africa

Welcome to the Pharmalys newsletter Pharmalys team wishes you a very happy and prosperous New Year! Pharmalys Celebrates Our 10th Anniversary The Pharmalys team is very happy and proud to announce that we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our company’s establishment in Senegal, at the end of last year. The whole team gathered in Dakar to share work sessions, team building activities, gala evening and visits of Ousmane Sow Museum, Ngor and Gore islands. These few days were the opportunity to reinforce our links, to strengthen our collaboration and to boost our motivation to go further. We never stop striving for excellence in clinical research and quality standards. That is the reason why Pharmalys is chosen by big pharmaceutical companies, biotechs as well as academic medical structures from all over the world to conduct their clinical trials. Our first ten years in Africa have been more than positive. We have been a pioneer and a driving force in the clinical research field, allowing us to build up a strong reputation on the African markets, while maintaining an international perspective. This is due in a large part to our employees, here is one of the outstanding employees at Pharmalys.

Edem Paulin Kodjo

Introducing Our New Brand We are excited to introduce our new brand, one that tells the story of our growth and evolution as a company. First established in 2008 in London, UK, Pharmalys developed a second office in Dakar, Senegal ten years ago. We wanted to celebrate this milestone by creating a new logo that integrates our past, present and future through the blue foundations of the logo representing clinical trials, international requirements, high quality standards, data robustness, the yellow representing hope for better health worldwide.

Click here to find out more about our new identity

Athanasia Victorine MENSAH, Project Manager Victorine Mensah obtained her baccalaureate in science in 1999 with honours. She was granted an international cooperation scholarship to pursue her studies in Morocco, where she obtained her BSc in applied biology from Institute of Health Careers of Rabat, in 2003. Victorine started working in the clinical trials field in 2008 at “Institut Pasteur de Dakar” where she was involved as a Lab Scientist for a Hepatitis B therapeutic vaccine evaluation study. Her main responsibilities were to receive participants at the research site, collect and handle specimen, enter and review data in CRFs. In 2010 she joined the department of Parasitology at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar (UCAD) in Senegal as a Lab Scientist, working within a strong research team. Her commitment and willingness were soon noticed by her managers which led to a career progression as a Scientific Officer on Malaria vectored vaccine trials. During her time at UCAD, Victorine was involved in one baseline study and three vaccine trials within the Malaria Vectored Vaccines Consortium projects portfolio. She had extensive hands-on training in immunology and molecular biology at the Jenner Institute’s laboratories in Oxford University, UK. She was also involved in study site coordination, protocol submission, project management activities and contributed to results dissemination with peer reviewed publications of her work. Victorine joined Pharmalys in 2016 as a clinical research associate (CRA) which opened a new career path for her. As an international CRA, Victorine covered the whole spectrum of monitoring activities in several African countries. She worked on vaccines or drugs, phase 1 to 3 interventional clinical trials, mainly for infectious diseases such as Malaria, Hepatitis B, Ebola and HIV. Based on her excellent performance and work ethics, Victorine was promoted in January 2021, to the Clinical Project Manager role which comes with other challenges, but Victorine is a professional who likes to take new challenges. She literally threw herself in her new role and is delivering a fantastic job, recognised and appraised by her peers, those she mentors, her managers and last but not least, her study sponsors. See Victorine’s employee interview Victorine holds a Senegalese passport but rightly claims her multinational African background. She speaks Wolof, Creole, English and French. Victorine, loves sport in general, big fan of Real Madrid and Olympique de Marseille. She also loves cinema and historical films. She loves to travel , to shop and visit old castles. Her mother is the source of her motivation.

Victorine, thank you for these past fantastic 6 years! We look forward to many more years of collaboration to come. The sky is the limit for you at Pharmalys.