This story, written by Megan Molteni, first appeared in .
When evening falls on a solar-panel-clad building outside the Nigerian capital of Lagos, its generators roar to life. The electrical grid here is unpredictable, and the company that works out of the building, 54gene, isn鈥檛 taking any chances. Losing power, even for a few hours, isn鈥檛 an option when you鈥檙e housing thousands of tubes of blood and spit at a stable 鈥�80 degrees Celsius.
Around the world, have sprung up to catalog human . But not in Africa. 蜜桃直播 of the human DNA used in genetic studies comes from people of European descent. When researchers survey vast numbers of genomes to unearth a disease鈥檚 genetic causes, they use almost no African data. Pharmaceutical companies, too, based overwhelmingly on . That鈥檚 why 54gene has been amassing DNA samples in its industrial-grade freezers. has left Africa behind.
鈥淐urrently, there鈥檚 this huge gap in genetic information,鈥� says Abasi Ene-Obong, who studied cancer biology at the University of London before founding 54gene in January. After completing stints at Y Combinator and Google Launchpad Africa, the company secured $4.5 million in seed funding this summer to start filling that gap, the biggest seed round ever for a Nigerian health tech startup. Ene-Obong says they鈥檙e on track to collect 40,000 samples by the end of this year, and 200,000 samples by the end of 2020. If it reaches that number, 54gene would be competitive with some of the biggest biobanks in the world. 鈥淲e want to make African genomics available to the world to power drug discoveries that can treat people of all races,鈥� Ene-Obong says.
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