Creating a West African BioResource for Nutritional Genetics and Epigenetics

The Nutrition Theme at MRC Unit The Gambia will partner with a broad team of collaborators in Bristol (Bristol University and MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit) to create a new West African BioResource (WABR). The new bioresource will consist of rich nutritional cohorts, databases and the Keneba Biobank constructed over decades of research in the West Kiang area of rural Gambia. These will be made open access to worldwide collaborators to support novel research methods to better understand the complex relationships between diet, nutritional status and infectious and non-communicable diseases. The new methodologies will be strongly based on a genes-in-action (alternatively known as recall-by-genotype) paradigm that allows investigators to research the impact of genetic and epigenetic variants on health with highly efficient studies using small numbers of participants. Based upon the Bristol group's world-leading processes we will conduct a 'clone and adapt' exercise to bring the Gambian bioresource up to the same world standard. This process will be extended to the biobanks at MRCG Fajara and at our West African Global Health Alliance (WAGHA) partner institute IRESSEF in Dakar. We will also prepare a bioresource toolkit that can be accessed by other institutes with cohorts and biobanks in other LMICs.

Global open access to research is strongly encouraged as a means to maximise the return on investments for investigators, participants in medical research and funders. Based on an extraordinarily rich set of nutritional cohorts, databases and the Keneba Biobank we will team up with researchers in Bristol to 'professionalise and externalise' these resources with a special emphasis on driving new collaborations using our genes-in-action (recall-by-genotype) paradigm that allows highly efficient research on the impact of genetic and epigenetic variants on nutritionally-mediated disease processes. The initial work based around the cohorts led by the Nutrition Theme at MRCG will be extended first to additional biobanks at MRCG Fajara and at IRESSEF Dakar through our the West African Global Health Alliance (WAGHA). We will additionally create a toolbox that can be adapted for uptake by other LMIC institutions.

Progress in developing next-generation nutritional interventions is still greatly hampered by serious gaps in our understanding of mechanisms underlying complex diet/disease interactions. Progress in this field can be accelerated a) by a greater sharing of cohorts, databases and biobanks internationally in order to bring the best minds to bear on the problems, and b) by developing novel research methods. Creation of the proposed West African BioResource (WABR) will take a major step in this direction by promoting international open access to the unique nutritional resources collected over many decades at MRCG Keneba. These processes will be immediately cloned to MRCG Fajara and IRESSEF Dakar and a transportable toolkit will be offered for uptake by other institutions in LMICs. We anticipate that this process will make an important contribution to accelerating discovery science in the field of nutrition and beyond.