Tailor-made treatment on cards in future

PERSONALISED medicine for South Africans is a step closer‚ with the announcement that the African Genomics Centre is under construction in Cape Town.

South African Medical Research Council president Glenda Gray said it “propels South Africa into a new era of medical research and means that we join a small‚ but growing‚ group of countries that are pioneering this type of innovation”.

Gray said the centre‚ which will be hosted by the council and is being set up in collaboration with the Beijing Genomics Institute‚ would be a vital national asset.

It would be able to contribute to the better understanding of factors that impact on the health of South Africans and inform strategies to improve response to diseases.

It would mean quicker diagnosis and more targeted treatment of conditions that contributed to South Africa’s heavy burden of disease‚ such as hypertension‚ stroke‚ heart disease‚ diabetes and cancer.

“This novel field of research harnesses the science of genomics for personalised medicine‚” Gray said.

“By establishing the sequence of an individual’s genetic material‚ it is possible to identify mutations which are specific to that person. These genetic tools will convey insights on treatments for common diseases like diabetes.”