‘In 2021, Yaw, alongside his three co-founders, founded Yemaachi Biotechnology (Yemaachi) with a bold ambition: to improve precision oncology by leveraging Africa’s unparalleled genetic diversity. The goal is to generate data that can be used for biomarker or drug discovery research, with the hope of improving health globally.
African communities have a high degree of diversity and a large effective population size, meaning that alleles that are rare or absent in other populations can be identified in these communities. The relationship between genomes and disease is also easier to identify in African communities than other populations because haplotype blocks tend to be small due to high recombination rates. Researchers can use this in genome-wide association studies to pinpoint causal variants with ease.
Africa is not just part of the solution to improve health — it is central to it. So why should it be African researchers and companies like Yemaachi who drive genetic research in Africa?’
Read more: Oxford Nanopore Technologies