TRAILBLAZER
Yusuf
Founder and CEO IndyGeneUS AI
HENRIQUES
IndyGeneUS AI is a genomics company that is creating the world ’ s largest blockchain-encrypted repository of indigenous and diasporic African clinical data , aimed at disease prevention and detection , and drug discovery .
Yusuf Henriques decided to form the company after seeing the health disparities between white and Black populations during the COVID-19 pandemic . With a background in science , public health and technology , he was approached by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create a " hackathon " to address racism in healthcare . At the event IndyGeneUS AI was born , which he currently runs alongside Chief Operating Officer Wilmot Allen and Chief Scientific Officer Bradford Wilson .
The company has established a subsidiary in Kenya , where it is sequencing 18,000 samples from Black people with HIV , with the aim of supplying useful data to pharma companies developing vaccines for HIV . There are also plans to build facilities in other African countries to tackle the lack of sequencing and drug development capacity on the continent .
16 December 2021