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David Twesigomwe — PhD Graduate, University of the Witwatersrand


David Twesigomwe has recently graduated with a Ph.D. in Human Genetics at the University of the Witwatersrand, under the supervision of Prof Scott Hazelhurst and Prof Zané Lombard. David’s Ph.D. aimed to characterize the genetic variation in African populations for three important pharmacogenes, i.e. CYP2D6, CYP2B6 and CYP2A6. This research was nested within the Wits-H3Africa/GSK ADME project (PI: Prof Scott Hazelhurst) and it was based at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB).

David is currently embarking on a prestigious 4-year postdoctoral fellowship hosted at the SBIMB and co-hosted by the University of Edinburgh with funding support from the Sydney Brenner Charitable Trust. He is excited about the opportunity to contribute to precision medicine advances in Africa through addressing knowledge gaps on African-ancestry pharmacogenomic variation, developing reproducible bioinformatics pipelines, and assessing the utility of clinical pharmacogenetic implementation.

David says: “I feel thankful to H3Africa because the majority of the data that was used in our study was originally generated from previous H3Africa initiatives. It has been inspiring to see the Consortium grow and to be part of the next generation of scientists that are taking genomics research forward in Africa.”

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