NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

By Yomi Kazeem

There’s a very obvious gap in global genomics data: only 2% of data used in available genome-wide association studies are of African ancestry.

One company’s efforts to fix that lack of diversity is being increasingly backed by investors wise to the scale of the opportunity. 54gene, a genomics research company focused on Africans, has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Adjuvant Capital, an investment fund for life science technologies backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Novartis and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. The round also saw participation from Raba Capital, V8 Capital, Ingressive Capital as well as follow on investment from Y Combinator, Better Ventures, Fifty Years, KdT Ventures, Aera VC and Pioneer Fund. The round follows 54gene’s $4.5 million seed round raise last July.

Photo courtesy of Tumisu.