New effort aims to build an African ancestry biobank
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Four big drug companies are joining with a historically Black medical school to build a database of genetic information from a half-million people of African ancestry that could help address health inequities.
Why it matters: African Americans have been historically underrepresented in scientific and medical research, and account for less than 2% of the known genetic information being studied today.
- Sponsors say the biobank could identify overlooked disease-causing mutations, predict who is at risk and help develop medicines for a more diverse patient population.
Driving the news: Regeneron, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and Roche are each committing $20 million to the effort, called Together for CHANGE, in partnership with Meharry Medical College in Nashville, one of the oldest historically Black academic health sciences centers in the U.S.
- The Regeneron Genetics Center, a subsidiary of the biopharma company, will sequence the genetic samples, which will include at least 50,000 whole genomes, per Science.
- An institute at Meharry will recruit patients there and at other HBCU health centers using deidentified medical records for clinical data.
- Roche will lead efforts to collect up to 20,000 samples and related phenotype data from regions of Africa.
Together for CHANGE is also trying to address inequities in STEM careers by establishing a grant program to support research in genomics and related fields at HBCUs, and STEM programs in minority communities for grade school students.
- "African Americans have been — and continue to be — underrepresented in scientific and medical research, as well as in STEM careers, negatively impacting both health outcomes and career opportunities for this population," James Hildreth, CEO of Meharry, said in a statement.
Catch up quick: The scientific community has been trying to expand diversity in medical research through efforts like All of Us, the NIH precision medicine initiative that aims to build a diverse database of health information from 1 million people for clues on treating disease.
- But Science noted only about 17% of the roughly 500,000 enrolled participants recruited so far identify as Black, African American or African.
