Cancer Innovation Shaped by Africa - For the World

Although Africa has the greatest human diversity on the planet, there’s been a dearth of genomic research there, particularly clinically-relevant cancer research that can potentially identify, detect, and cure cancer for both local and worldwide populations. Sub-Saharan Africa expects to see cancer deaths double to reach 1 million per year by 2030. There’s a lot of local research on infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, but there has been a lack of locally-driven cancer research.

Yemaachi Biotech, a Y-Combinator alumni led by Yaw Bediako which is based in Accra and does research throughout West Africa, is creating a robust cancer knowledge base to develop the next generation of cancer drugs that are effective in diverse populations. They have been exploring the democratizing possibilities of liquid biopsy (testing for cancer through blood samples), figuring out how to feasibly transport such blood samples from far-away villages to labs, and have discovered hitherto unknown breast cancer variants among Ghanaian women, including a novel BRCA1 variant. They have a cutting-edge lab in Accra, which I visited, with multiple levels of backup generators to make sure they keep electricity on and samples frozen.

On March 6th, 2024, Yemaachi was named a recipient of a Cancer Grand Challenges award of up to $25 million over five years - as part of Team SAMBAI led by Professor Melissa Davis of Morehouse School of Medicine to advance research on cancer inequities. SAMBAI will create a dataset of factors that cause and influence breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancer outcomes in underserved populations of African descent — with the goal of figuring out specific interventions for groups underrepresented in cancer research worldwide.

We look forward to the results of this challenge!