Mission
Equip Africa's health and life-science industry with frontier tools, so African biodata powers African innovation.
Diagnosis → drug discovery → the farm
Building forthe most diversegenomes on Earth
African genomes hold more genetic variation than anywhere else, yet they're among the least studied. BIODORA builds frontier biotech tools for and with African biodata.
The research
gap
gap
Of genetic study participants:
0%
Are of African ancestry_
Sirugo et al., Cell, 2019
Scanning chr17 · BRCA1Move to disturb · click to pulse
Mission & vision
Why BIODORA
exists.
Africa holds more human genetic diversity than anywhere on Earth, yet most medicines, diagnostics and data tools are built on genomes from elsewhere. We exist to change who builds, who owns and who benefits.
Vision
A continent that discovers, owns and benefits from its own biology.
Biodata sovereignty
African data, governed in Africa.
Building from Abuja, Nigeria
Core values
Sovereignty first
African biodata, governed by the people and institutions it comes from.
Built with, not for
Co-designed with clinicians, labs and communities from day one.
Rigour you can check
Validated, explainable science that stands up to peer review.
Native innovation
Tools shaped for African genomes, health systems and economics.
How we work
Modern tech, African ownership.
Every product follows the same loop, so the people behind the data share in what gets built from it.
- 01
Partner
We co-design every study with African hospitals, labs and research institutes.
- Co-design
- Ethics review
- 02
Govern
Consented biodata stays under local governance, with communities deciding how it’s used.
- Consent
- Data sovereignty
- 03
Build
Frontier AI and genomics, adapted to African genomes and validated on local data.
- AI models
- Validation
- 04
Deploy & return
Tools go into African health systems, and value flows back as access, credit and skills.
- Deployment
- Benefit sharing
Products
One platform,
a growing suite.
We start where the gap is widest: making sense of what African genomes actually say. Every BIODORA product shares one engine, and one commitment to the people behind the data.
Product 01 · DNA variant interpretation
GENEDORA
- Input
- VCF · HGVS
- Output
- Call + evidence
- Population data
- Not used
Clear, explainable calls on variants of uncertain significance, scored from the DNA itself instead of population databases that under-represent African genomes.
02In development
Pharmacogenomics
Drug-response insight tuned to African populations, so dosing guidance fits the patient.
03In development
Crops & livestock
Variant effects for breeders working with the plants and animals Africa depends on.
04In development
Target discovery
Sequence-level evidence to find and prioritise drug targets in diverse genomes.
An interpretation layer for DNA variants. It reads the genome directly and tells you how likely a change is to break something.
A score from the
sequence itself
IllustrativeGCTGTGAATGCTAAACC
T → GΔ log-likelihood
0.0000Likely disruptive
Our models compare how likely the original and the changed sequence are. A sharp drop suggests the change disrupts function.
No database
blind spots
Scores don't depend on how often a variant appears in reference populations, so under-studied ancestries aren't penalised.
Explainable
by default
Every call ships with the evidence behind it, ready for a geneticist to review.
Built for real
lab workflows.
ACMG-aligned evidenceVCF & HGVS inputBenchmarked against ClinVarBuilt for African genomesHuman, plant & animal genomesAPI & dashboard accessExplainable by designResearch partners welcomeACMG-aligned evidenceVCF & HGVS inputBenchmarked against ClinVarBuilt for African genomesHuman, plant & animal genomesAPI & dashboard accessExplainable by designResearch partners welcome
Why it matters
Uncertainty isn't
evenly shared.
We're starting with African genomes: the most genetically diverse on Earth, and among the least represented in the data clinicians rely on.
01
Reference data skews European
Most variant databases were built from people of European ancestry. Common, harmless variants in other populations can look rare, and therefore suspicious.
02
So results come back uncertain
Patients from under-represented groups receive more “variants of uncertain significance”: answers that can’t guide care.
03
GENEDORA reads the sequence instead
Our models learned the grammar of DNA itself. They don’t need to have seen a variant in anyone before to score it.
Our approach
Read the sequence,
not the census.
Most tools ask how common a variant is. GENEDORA asks what it does, using models that learned the grammar of DNA from genomes across all domains of life.
01
Sequence-native
Scores come from the DNA itself, not from how often a variant shows up in a database.
02
Ready for the unseen
Rare and novel variants get a score too, including ones no one has catalogued yet.
03
Ancestry-agnostic
No population frequencies in the score, so under-represented groups aren’t penalised.
04
Evidence built in
Each result explains itself, ready for a geneticist to review and sign off.
Methodology and validation results are available to partners on request.
How it works
From VCF to verdict
in three steps.
- 01
Upload variants
Send a VCF or a list of HGVS variants through the dashboard or API.
- 02
Score in context
Our models read the genomic context around each variant and measure how much the change disrupts it.
- 03
Review the call
Get a calibrated classification with its evidence, ready to fold into your ACMG workflow.
Variant reportExample
- Gene
- BRCA1
- Transcript
- NM_007294.4
- Variant
- c.181T>G
- Protein
- p.Cys61Gly
- Population data
- Not used
GENEDORA score−0.0187
CallLikely disruptive
Illustrative values. Not a clinical result.
Who we build for
Use cases
One engine underneath, with products shaped for the teams who need to know what a change in DNA actually does.
Testing labs
Clinical & testing labs
Re-examine variants of uncertain significance with a second, sequence-based line of evidence, and write reports your patients' clinicians can act on.
- VCF in, ranked variants out
- Per-variant evidence trail
- Fits existing ACMG review
Early access
Build what's next
with African biodata.
We're partnering with testing labs, pharma teams, breeders and research institutions for our first studies, starting with GENEDORA. Tell us where to reach you.