Saudi geneticists are racing time to establish Saudi Arabia’s first-ever human genome, an initiative endorsed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, earlier in November.
The Saudi Human Genome Program (SHGP) is made up of a consortium of members that share the common goals and principles of the Program and have agreed to work in a coordinated and collaborative manner within a defined structure.
The National Laboratory of the Saudi Human Genome, leading the SHGP, contains the latest technologies in the study of genetic code, and 100,000 samples which are being examined to create a medical database.
Equipped to diagnose a large number of genetic diseases, the laboratory and lowers the cost of healthcare for patients in Saudi Arabia from 6.4 billion riyals ($1.7 billion) a year to 3.84 billion riyals ($1 billion) a year.
Established in 2013, the program has successfully helped in screening and diagnosing over three thousand Saudi patients.
“The foundations for genetic modification research in Saudi Arabia is available at the project’s database and accessible to any researcher who wishes to study it, but in fact the research of genetic modification in the world is still in its early stages-- we need more research and studies to make sure that it is effective,” said General Supervisor of the National Laboratory of the Saudi Human Project Sultan Al Sedairy.
According to information obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat, 35,000 patient samples retrieved from across 26 hospitals from around the Kingdom and 14,000 genetic variants have been identified.
The emergence of these genetic anomalies in society is a major cause of the high incidence of genetic disorders in some babies.
Saudi Arabia has a high burden of genetic disease, both in the form of severe inherited diseases, which show up early in life and impact 8 percent of births in the Kingdom, and in the form of common genetic diseases that show up later in life, such as diabetes, which ultimately impacts over 20 percent of the population.
The Saudi Human Genome Program is a specific effort to solve genetic disease in the Kingdom, to lay the foundation for the development of Personalized Medicine and establish capacity for a Genomics industry more broadly.
This is envisioned as a 10-year project to find the genes responsible for the genetic diseases that impact the Kingdom, by reading (often called “sequencing”) the genomes of 20,000 subjects, representing both the general population, and all the major diseases.
This will be the largest disease gene discovery project ever undertaken, and will therefore also establish the Kingdom as a world leader in disease genetics research and Personalized Medicine.
