A drug screening platform to assess effect of genetic variation on liver enzyme activity

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I am a Sri Lankan-born bioinformatics/machine learning scientist at the University of Cambridge and one of two co-founders of Pentail Enzymes Ltd, a Cambridge-based biotech startup developing tools and products to enable precision medicine for underrepresented populations. I was driven to set up this interdisciplinary enterprise with my co-founder Dr. Paulo Amaral (a molecular geneticist) in 2018 to address the current lack of ethnic genetic diversity in commercially available cell line products used for drug safety and efficacy testing, and of clinical trial participants which means there are limited pharmacogenomic insights for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) populations to benefit from precision medicine. If ethnic minority groups are not appropriately represented and results derived from a different genetic background to them are used to inform their treatments, this might not be as personalised and be potentially harmful. The goal of this project is to assess the feasibility of developing an integrated technology platform to generate high-value pharmacogenomics insights to inform clinical trial stratification and improve treatment options for underrepresented populations.