Concept Clearances

Human Heredity and Health in Africa
Program Title Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa)

Program Goal:

To enhance the capability of African scientists to use contemporary research approaches to improve African health and reduce health disparities by providing support for the training of African scientists, support for genetics/genomics and environmental research on health and disease in Africa, and support to increase the infrastructure needed.

IC Director(s) Staff who provide general scientific leadership

Eric Green, NHGRI

Program Coordinator(s): IC staff who provide daily oversight and leadership for the program

Mark Guyer (NHGRI), Jane Peterson (NHGRI)

Proposed Component Initiatives

4 Initiatives  (1) Infrastructure: An African Bioinformatics Network; (2) Infrastructure: An African Biorepository; (3) H3Africa Research Projects; (4) Societal Implications Research in Africa

Overall Program

  • There is a critical need to address issues of both communicable and non-communicable diseases around the world, and the NIH has a long-standing commitment to global health research and training.  Enhancing its efforts in this area is a stated NIH priority.  Genomics and other large-scale biological studies provide the basis for a contemporary strategy for research that will reveal the genetic and environmental contributors to health and disease and, in turn, to unimagined advances in medical science and powerful new ways for improving human health. However, research in Africa by African scientists and studies of African populations are substantially underrepresented in global genetic research.  The H3Africa initiative is designed to enhance the capabilities of African scientists and research institutions to take advantage of powerful new genomic approaches to conduct research on diseases and health in Africa. As these technologies and approaches can be applied to essentially all health conditions and diseases, the interests of the vast majority of NIH ICs can be addressed by an empowered African research community.
  • H3Africa is designed (1) to increase significantly both the amount of state-of-the-art genomics-based research being done in Africa and (2) to enhance the local expertise needed to lead research programs on African health.  It will be synergistic with the number of IC programs that support research and training programs in Africa, and will contribute by both building new infrastructure and funding new research programs.
  • H3Africa has three interrelated, interdependent objectives.  The first is to increase the human resources for conducting cutting-edge research in Africa through training and enhanced collaborations within Africa and with the African scientific diaspora.  The second is to support cutting-edge research that will not only generate important findings and discoveries, but will serve as a venue for research training and for the improvement of the Africa laboratories where the research is carried out.  The third is to support the improvement of specific types of infrastructure, i.e., bioinformatics and biorepository capacity, which is needed to do such research.
  • The H3Africa program is based on the following tenets: (1) awards will be made to African Institutions with African PIs; (2) the majority of the funds must be spent in Africa; (3) collaborations between and among African institutions and  African countries will be strongly encouraged; and (4) genetics/genomics training will be included in the research projects. 
  • The overall criteria for the success of the H3Africa Project will include: enablement of African scientists to apply genomics to improve African health, empowerment of African researchers to be competitive in the use of genomic approaches to important medical questions and in studies of the societal implications of genomic research; establishment of effective collaborations among African researchers on the African continent; and achievement of sustainability beyond NIH Common Fund support.
  • H3Africa is complementary to the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) within the Common Fund Global Health Program.
  • H3Africa is a partnership with the Wellcome Trust and the African Society of Human Genetics (AfSHG).  The three partners established two international working groups that jointly developed a proposal for an African genomics research program over the last two years.  This program was described in a white paper released in January 2011 (see http://www.h3africa.org), which was subsequently discussed at an international meeting held in Cape Town, South Africa in March 2011, where its recommendations were ratified.
  • The partnership with the Wellcome Trust is important to the sustainability of H3Africa, as the Trust has a significant amount of experience in supporting research in Africa, having had significant scientific activity in Africa over the past 20 years.  The Trust’s projects, which will focus on research, will be part of the H3Africa Research Network (H3ARN).  The Trust will participate fully in H3Africa activities (e.g., in the applicant information meeting planned (August 2011), and a societal implications meeting in November 2011 [see below]), and will co-support all H3ARN meetings, one of which it will host in London.

Component Initiatives

Initiative 1.  Infrastructure:  An H3Africa Bioinformatics Network

  • Goal.A bioinformatics network (H3NET) will provide effective connectivity among the research sites in the H3Africa program and beyond.  If successful, and it will eventually be link African genomic researchers across the continent.  H3NET will provide: (a) a set of bioinformatics nodes across the continent, (b) training in using bioinformatics tools for data analysis in African genomic research projects (training will involve both workshops and individual opportunities), (c) new computational tools designed specifically to address the challenges of African genomic and related environmental research, and (d) collaborative opportunities and consultant bioinformatic services to the H3Africa research projects.
  • Milestones. The articulation of specific milestones for H3NET will need to await the determination of the actual capabilities of both the H3NET and research project awardees, and later the biorepository awardee.  In general, the milestones will quantitatively address the development of network capabilities and services, its connection of H3Africa research sites to H3NET, the number and subjects of training workshops and other training activities, the number of trainees, and the utility of the computational tools developed for genomic and related environmental research in Africa.

Initiative 2.  Infrastructure: An H3Africa Biorepository

  • Goal.H3Africa will support the establishment of one or more biorepositories, located on the African continent, that will be able to receive, store and distribute, safely and securely, the samples (e.g., blood, cell lines, DNA) from H3Africa projects, using state-of-the-art technologies, including electronic capability for sample and data management.  The biorepository will provide broad access to high-quality reagents and samples.  It is envisioned that the H3Africa Repository will be built upon existing biorepository infrastructure. In the longer term, the repository(ies) could provide services for research projects beyond H3Africa.
  • Milestones. The articulation of specific milestones for the H3Africa Repository will need to await the determination of the awardees of the research projects, so that the number of samples that will be generated and need to be stored at the repository can be determined.  In general, the milestones will quantitatively address the number of samples to be collected, the number of cell lines to be generated, quality control/quality assessment activities, and distribution capacity.
  • The funding of the H3Africa Biorepository is not proposed to start until at least FY13 because NIH staff need additional time to assess existing biorepository capacity in Africa and to determine the feasibility of, and requirements for, the H3Africa Biorepository.  The most effective means of assessment are currently being considered, and may include one or more of the following – workshop(s), planning grants, and the use of consultants.

Initiative 3. H3Africa Research Projects

  • Goal. H3Africa will support an as-yet-to-be-determined number of research activities directed toward on the identification of the genomic and/or environmental determinants of African diseases and health.  The primary structure will be collaborative centers, involving a number of groups in a single country or, preferably, groups from a number of countries across Africa.
  • The research centers will provide research training opportunities at several levels (technical, undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, and faculty), which will comprise a large fraction of the H3Africa training activities.
  • The research centers will have the opportunity, at the discretion of the investigators to include projects addressing the societal implications of genomics.
  • The research carried out at the centers will help to inform the specific requirements for H3NET and the H3Africa Biorepository, and they will use existing and new H3Africa infrastructure in support of their research activities.
  • There will also be an opportunity for individual research projects within the scope of H3Africa.  The Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Linked Research Project FOA that is currently being developed will include language specific for genomics and H3Africa to support research projects consistent with the goals of H3Africa at institutions in the MEPI network.  Staff are also currently looking at ways to add genomics-based components to current research activities supported by other ICs.
  • All proposals to H3Africa, whether for collaborative centers or for individual projects, will be required to include timelines and a set of annual milestones (quantitative where possible). These will address, but not be limited to, definition of quality assessment guidelines and means to determine how well the project has met its own QC measures, as well as numerical goals  for  accumulating samples for the project, generation of genomic data sets (at the project site or by a service center) and analysis of the data.
  • The Common Fund contribution to this initiative will be augmented by funds committed by ICs.  Currently, $2M has been committed by NHGRI, and $1.25M by three other ICs to support research in their specific areas of interest. A few other ICs are still considering participation in the initial (FY12) RFA.  Still other ICs have indicated that if an application submitted in response to the RFA were to do well, they would consider funding it.

Initiative 4. Societal Implications Research in Africa

  • Goal.  This initiative will provide support for investigator-initiated research projects to address the particular challenges of genomics research in Africa. To reap the benefits of genomic research, it will be necessary to (1) learn more about how to increase the general knowledge of genomics among African communities; (2)  identify traditional knowledge and cultural practices around which new concepts in genomics can be built for integration into the understanding of the African people, (3)  support the development of guidelines for the regulatory aspects of genomics research and its use, and (4) develop tools to enhance the understanding and use of new products of genomics research by Africans.
  • Milestones.  This is an area in which it is difficult to develop quantitative milestones, other than to fund a specific number of high-quality research applications.
  • The funding of independent investigators in the area of societal implications will also be delayed until FY13 to allow the development of a set of research priorities on which to base a solicitation, and to understand how to build most effectively on previous NIH support for bioethics training in Africa.  A meeting is being planned in Africa in late 2011 to bring together the emerging cohort of bioethicists and scientists interested in genomics research to present their research and to network with local, African and international researchers to establish and strengthen collaborations and to develop a roadmap for research and practice of ethics of genomic research in Africa.  NHGRI will support that meeting, and other ICs are welcome to participate.

Portfolio Analysis
In FY2010, NIH provided $59.0M in 75 grant awards that were made directly to African institutions.

Support Category Total Awarded ($) Number of grants
Grants Management Infrastructure 29,527,517 10
Research 22,859,816 37
Research ethics 2,574,178 3
Training 4,061,722 25
  59,023,233 75

Of the $22.9M awarded to support research, the majority was for HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases; two grants totaling $1M were in the area of cardiovascular disease and we are unable to categorize 29 grants totaling $7.2M.  Only 8 of the grants included any research on genetics, and in most of those cases, genetics comprised only a small fraction of the effort.  In addition to the grant funds, some contract funds were also awarded to African institutions (e.g. NHLBI Centers of Excellence in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research).

The NIH’s partner in H3Africa, the Wellcome Trust, also provides research support directly to African institutions but, again, only a small amount supports work on the genomic and genetic contribution to disease.

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