Ugo Aliogo
As part of efforts to improve research capacity in Nigeria healthcare space and apply the technology to further understand the genomic potential in African population, 54gene has launched a national research consortium.
Speaking at the launch of the event in Lagos recently, the Chief Executive Officer, 54gene, Dr. Abasi Eneobong, there was need to understand the genomics of Africans because in 2018, only two per cent of research carried out on genomics was done on Africans.
He also noted that Africans make up 14 per cent of the world’s population, adding that the genetic diversity of Africans is like half of the world’s population so basically, almost 50 per cent genetic variations lies in Africa.
He remarked that due to a lot of reasons, the continent has not produced genomes, for people to study, adding that Caucasian producing the most genomes, and most of the studies and breakthroughs that have been carried out so far, have been carried out on Caucasian genomes.
Eneobong explained that there are situations in which some of the new drugs are made, new diagnosis and personalised therapies are not working on Africans, stating that being able to understand the genomics “and finding the variations that we could target for drugs or diagnosis, we could potentially find therapists that treat people of all races.”
According to him, the bio bank is an initiative setup for collecting samples, and it is voluntarily, therefore 54gene partner with health institutions in Africa, “who we recruit into the heritage study and our goal is that within the next six months.”
Eneobong said: “We would have gotten 40,000 participants in the bio bank. These people are those who volunteered their samples for us to study obviously we abide by all the privacy and security rules governing the biggest of healthcare companies in the world.
“In the Nigeria healthcare space, there are few things, it will lead to. One of the things we have seen is that some of the diseases we taught were not rare diseases, were not African or Nigeria, are actually an African and Nigeria thing and because nobody has highlighted this thing, and there are no drugs for treatment in the country, and just by being able to understand the disease profile of the population, then we can actually use that in population and policy planning, drug access in other words bringing drugs that already exists in other markets into the country.
“Hopefully as we progress, we will understand the genomics of Nigerians and ensure that we are advocating for the right drugs to be brought in and if there is any drug created,” he added.
In her remarks, the National Principal Investigator, 54gene Heritage Study, Dr. Omolola Salako, said the study set out to gather clinical data and bio specimen from patients living with certain diseases or conditions such as cancer, neuro-generated diseases such as Parkinson, sickle disease which Nigeria has the highest prevalence, cardiac diseases. He also maintained that the study aims to understand the genetic mutations, and variations, that Nigeria patients have, adding that the genes of Africans are diverse, particularly Nigerians.
