Nigerian Healthtech Startup 54gene Secures $15m Series-A Funding

• Nigerian healthtech platform 54gene has recieved a $15-million in a Series-A funding round, led by Adjuvant Capital, a US based life sciences fund backed by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC).
• The new investment follows a seed round of $4.5 million raised by the startup in July of last year, bringing total venture capital (VC) investment to $19.5 million from the company.
• 54gene stated that the investment will also be used to accelerate discovery capabilities by reinforcing operations in genetics, bioinformatics, preclinical, clinical and commercial programmes.
Nigerian healthtech platform 54gene has secured a $15-million in a Series-A funding round, which was led by Adjuvant Capital, a US based life sciences fund backed by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), pharmaceutical company Novartis, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The round included participation from Raba Capital, V8 Capital, Ingressive Capital, and follow on investment from Y Combinator, Better Ventures, Fifty Years, KdT Ventures, Aera VC and Pioneer Fund.
Abasi Ene-Obong created the company, which aims to improve drug discovery by studying the genetically diverse African population, and has offices in Lagos and San Francisco. It was released last January.
The new investment follows a seed round of $4.5 million raised by the startup in July of last year, bringing total venture capital (VC) investment to $19.5 million from the company.
54gene’s in a statement today, said $15M funding investment would enable the company to scale up operations.
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It also stated that the investment will also be used to accelerate discovery capabilities by reinforcing operations in genetics, bioinformatics, preclinical, clinical and commercial programmes.
The startup said it is currently collaborating with more than 300 researchers, clinicians and geneticists around the continent.
The company has also established an African Biobank, a state-of-the-art biorepository that stores biological samples to provide researchers access to aggregated, de-identified data and bio-specimens specifically for secondary use, to support both academic and development research.
The company added that it will pursue collaborations and opportunities to co-develop drug targets and therapeutics, and plan to collaborate with clinical program companies in Africa including pharmaceutical, medical devices, and diagnostic firms.
54gene having received the $15M funding, added that it will pursue collaborations and opportunities to co-develop drug targets and therapeutics, and aims to partner with clinical program companies in Africa with pharmaceutical, medical devices, and diagnostics.
Ene-Obong said in the statement that in the coming months the startup will be focusing on building a genomic resource that we hope will add significantly to global health, while also translating to the health benefits of patients in Africa.
“We will also be expanding our collaborations in Africa with both public and private stakeholders and investing in setting up a state-of-the-art research lab with high-throughput genetic processing and BSL 3 capabilities in Nigeria, and ensuring that we build some of our innovative pipelines on the African continent,” he said.
Furthermore, 54gene also announced the establishment of its Scientific Advisory Board. It said that the board is made up of global leaders in clinical genetics, bioinformatics, and data science.
They are, Center for Genomic Health’s Michael F Murray, Stanford University’s Manuel Rivas, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals’ Greg Hinkle and Related Sciences’s Jeff Hammerbacher.
Last month the company revealed in a blog post that it had launched a fund to address the emerging issues surrounding research for Covid-19 in Nigeria.