The Genomic Route To Targeted Cures

Enabling a sharper understanding of Asian populations, the GenomeAsia 100K project may well shake up our medicine cabinet

- Siddhartha Mishra

On December 5, 2019, scientists from the GenomeAsia 100K project published an article (‘The GenomeAsia 100K Project enables genetic discoveries across Asia’) in the prestigious science journal Nature. It is the largest genomic study of Asian populations, covering 1,739 individuals from 219 different population groups and 64 countries. India has the maximum number of whole-genome sequences at 598. Besides enabling a better understanding of how Asian populations were formed, the resulting work will also make it possible to find out which medicines suit them better, based on genetic data.

The need for a more varied genetic database from populations across the world was highlighted in 2009 when analysis revealed that 96 percent of participants in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were of European descent. GWAS studies associate certain diseases with specific variations and the lack of data from different parts of the world meant medicines either couldn’t be catered to suit them or were entirely unsuitable to them.

“We show that the variant data produced by this project improve variant filtering for the discovery of disease-associated genes of rare diseases. We show that Asia has sizable founder populations and that further studies in these populations may be useful for the discovery of rare-disease-associated genes,” the paper says. For example, the researchers found that carbamazepine, an anti-convulsant, may have adverse effects on about 400 million South-East Asians who form part of the Austronesian language group. The paper also mentions that drugs like clopidogrel, peginterferon and warfarin “showed the largest variation between populations in predicted adverse drug responses”.