October 21st 2023.
Meharry Medical College, an HBCU, has launched an initiative to study genetic variants affecting Black people along with Regeneron Genetics Center, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Roche. In the largest such partnership to date, the project has been titled Together for Changing Healthcare for People of African Ancestry through an InterNational Genomics & Equity and is set to have an $80 million budget.
Meharry has created a non-profit, the Diaspora Human Genomics Institute, to manage the data that they plan to collect. The initiative seeks to collect genetic material from 500,000 people of African descent in order to better map their genetic highway. It is hoped that this material could help create new medicines or diagnostic exams and also reduce health disparities.
Anil Shanker, senior vice president for Research and Innovation at Meharry, expressed the importance of this project in bridging the gap in genetic information studied that comes from people of African descent. He said, “We are going to bridge that gap, and this is just the beginning.”
Regeneron Genetics Center’s executive director for Research Initiatives, Lyndon Mitnaul, has also expressed his excitement about the project. He said, “You can imagine if these schools have such a resource, other academic institutions are going to want to collaborate with them.”
The project will begin by enrolling Nashville area patients to donate their blood, which will be sent to the Regeneron Genetics Center and sequenced at no cost. The data will then go into a repository at Meharry’s Diaspora Human Genomics Institute, and the database will be shared amongst HBCUs exclusively and institutions involved with the project in Africa. Other researchers must contact these entities for access to the genetic information, which will be kept anonymous.
The University of Zambia in Africa and other HBCUs in the United States will be recruiting volunteers for the project. It is expected to take five years to enroll the 500,000 necessary participants.
The initiative also involves creating a grant program to support research and education in genomics and other related fields at Meharry. Additionally, corporate pharmaceutical companies are to contribute $20 million each for the genetic and educational components of the partnership. There will be STEM programs for grade school students in diverse communities.
The project is an attempt to correct the underrepresentation of Black people or people of African descent in the field of genomics. Currently, the genetic material of that population makes up less than 0.5% of participants in genetic studies. James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry, said, “This is a historic partnership. Nothing like this has ever happened before, when multiple drug companies partner with an academic institution, especially an HBCU [historically Black college or university], to do something like this.”
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