Abstract
The African Pharmacogenomics Consortium (APC) was formally launched on the 6th September 2018. This white paper outlines its vision, and objectives towards addressing challenges of conducting and applying pharmacogenomics in Africa and identifies opportunities for advancement of individualized drugs use on the continent. Africa, especially south of the Sahara, is beset with a huge burden of infectious diseases with much co-morbidity whose multiplicity and intersection are major challenges in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG), SDG3, on health and wellness. The profile of drugs commonly used in African populations lead to a different spectrum of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) when compared to other parts of the world. Coupled with the genetic diversity among Africans, the APC is established to promote pharmacogenomics research and its clinical implementation for safe and effective use of medicine in the continent. Variation in the way patients respond to treatment is mainly due to differences in activity of enzymes and transporters involved in pathways associated with each drug's disposition. Knowledge of pharmacogenomics, therefore, helps in identifying genetic variants in these proteins and their functional effects. Africa needs to consolidate its pharmacogenomics expertise and technological platforms to bring pharmacogenomics to use.
Highlights
If the emerging genomic diversity of African populations is observed in clinically significant pharmacogenes, that diversity will present an opportunity for Africa to actively participate in the drug discovery and development process. This can be done through several ways including (i) opportunities to discover disease receptor subtypes that can help provide proof of concept through validation of the selected target as suitable for drug discovery, (ii) having higher frequency of important PGx variants not commonly found in other world populations, making it strategically and economically attractive to conduct phase I clinical studies in African populations, and (iii) biomarker discovery for adverse drug reactions (ADRs) will be more productive in a population that shows a wide genetic diversity of involved gene(s)
In order to support the health care system, African Pharmacogenomics Consortium (APC) will develop and regularly update pharmacogenomics implementation guidelines for African populations and these should benefit from seamless link with the pharmacovigilance and clinical trials platforms in Africa
The WHO urged the implementation of pharmacovigilance centres in Africa to raise the awareness of ADRs (US Agency for International Development)
Summary
In a contribution to domestication of precision medicine, the consortium will foster development of robust electronic health records for patients and decision support systems to translate, share and communicate pharmacogenomics results to healthcare providers and patients, and to provide evidence-based recommendation for policy makers to revise treatment guidelines relevant for African populations.
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