Senegal: Institut Pasteur de Dakar Sequences the First Human Whole Genomes in the Country and Launches an Early Cancer Detection Platform
Forty whole human genomes, the first ever sequenced in Senegal, have just come out of the Institut Pasteur de Dakar. The institute used both Illumina and Oxford Nanopore Technologies platforms to complete the sequencing, a milestone that puts Senegal on the map of countries building real genomic science capacity at home.
Alongside the sequencing achievement, Institut Pasteur de Dakar has launched a clinical laboratory and bioinformatics platform that can now test for genetic predisposition to early-onset breast cancer, as well as other rare heritable gene changes. For women in Senegal and across the region, this means access to a kind of screening that previously required sending samples far beyond African borders.
The institute has also kicked off a multidisciplinary research program that brings together genomics, infectious diseases, and environmental factors to study the growing burden of cancer in Senegal and across the continent. Cancer research in Africa has long suffered from a shortage of locally generated data, and this program is a direct push against that gap.
What comes next from this platform, and how quickly it can scale to reach more patients across West Africa, is the question worth watching.
Originally published by AllAfrica.