Genomics & precision medicine · Biobanking
54gene
A Nigerian genomics company built to put African DNA into global drug discovery. It raised about $45 million in two years, wound down in 2023, and its biobank is now the subject of a court fight in Lagos.
A court order, and a price tag
In July 2025 a Federal High Court in Lagos was asked to stop a sale. The item on the block was not a building or a sequencing machine. According to court documents reported by TechCabal, the assets slated for sale included the biodata of 100,000 Nigerians, priced at $3 million.
The company that collected that material, 54gene, had stopped operating two years earlier. The petition came from the man who founded it. The court granted the injunction. Almost every contested fact behind it sits in allegations rather than findings.
The three percent problem
The gap 54gene set out to close is real. Africans and people of African ancestry are more genetically diverse than any other population, and close to absent from the databases drug developers use.
The company put it at less than 3 percent of genetic material used in global pharmaceutical research. The Nature Genetics comment its scientists published in May 2022 was more precise: about 3 percent of the genomic data in genome wide association studies came from people of African descent as of January 2019, and that share had fallen to 1.1 percent by 2021.
The consequence is not abstract. Aminu Yakubu, the company’s head of research governance and ethics, pointed to the HIV drug efavirenz, which he said produces severe side effects in about a quarter of Africans carrying a CYP2B6 variant.
Four founders and a reverse brain drain
Ene-Obong holds a master’s in human molecular genetics from Imperial College London and a PhD in cancer biology from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and worked in pharmaceutical consulting in the United States. He named the company after the 54 internationally recognised countries of Africa. WeeTracker reported three co-founders: Ogochukwu Osifo, Damilola Oni and Gatumi Aliyu.
He described the hiring plan to the BBC in 2019 as a reverse brain drain, pulling Nigerian scientists back from institutions in the US and UK. The company took $150,000 from Y Combinator in the Winter 2019 batch, a $4.5 million seed in July 2019, then $15 million led by Adjuvant Capital in April 2020, a fund backed by the Gates Foundation, Novartis and IFC. A $25 million Series B led by Cathay AfricInvest followed in September 2021.
The science ran through a nonprofit 54gene created and funded, the African Centre for Translational Genomics, which convened the Non-Communicable Diseases Genetic Heritage Study with Nigerian research institutes and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The target was 100,000 Nigerian genomes.
COVID money, and what it bought
Then the pandemic arrived, and a long horizon business found a short horizon one. 54gene turned its labs to COVID testing, supported the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and ran mobile laboratories. TechCrunch reported it was at one point among Nigeria’s largest COVID testing providers.
In December 2021 it extended that into commercial diagnostics as Seven River Labs, with collection centres in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt. Two sources told TechCabal the COVID line brought in at least $20 million, and others said the diagnostics build cost far more than it returned. When mandatory testing ended, the revenue went with it.
The unwinding
In August 2022 the company cut 95 jobs, about 30 percent of staff. In October, Ene-Obong resigned and general counsel Teresia Bost took over on an interim basis. Reporting described a bridge financing that marked the company down from roughly $170 million to $50 million.
TechCrunch published allegations about the departure and then retracted them, writing: “We have removed the allegations surrounding the departure of the former CEO, for which we have no proof, and sincerely apologise for the error.” Ene-Obong has since said the company never accused him of financial misappropriation and that a forensic audit found nothing.
Bost left after five months. Ron Chiarello became CEO in March 2023, by which point headcount was below 30, and left in July. In September, TechCabal reported the wind down: the website was gone and the PR agency said it no longer represented the company. Bost later sued the company and several associates in New Jersey, alleging discrimination and a hostile work environment. Ene-Obong launched a new genomics company, Syndicate Bio, that same month.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Form D, Apr 2020 | Filed as Stack Diagnostics, Inc., San Francisco. $21,526,703 offered, $18,651,384 sold, 23 investors. Related persons: Ene-Obong, Delali Attipoe, Jenny Yip. CIK 0001809111. | Public record |
| SEC Form D, Sep 2021 | Filed as 54Gene, Inc., Washington, DC. $37,509,818 offered, $25,119,754 sold, $12,390,064 remaining, 27 investors. Six related persons. No later filing. | Public record |
| Published sequencing | 449 whole genomes across 47 self-reported ethnolinguistic groups, Cell Genomics, Sep 2023, about 36 million SNPs and indels. Raw data at the European Genome-phenome Archive, EGAS00001007036, controlled access, non-commercial use. | Public record |
| Target versus output | Releases described a 100,000 genome project and a 500,000 genome continental ambition. GenomeWeb reported 75,000 participants recruited by May 2022. The peer-reviewed genome count is 449. | Claim exceeds record |
| Biobank size | Capacity over 300,000 samples (TechCrunch, Aug 2022). Over 130,000 samples held (company, Oct 2022). Reportedly over 200,000 (WeeTracker, 2023). Approximately 130,000 participants (Frontiers, 2026). | Figures differ |
| Peak valuation | Reported as $175 million cut to $50 million in March 2023 and as $170 million cut to $50 million in August 2025. No filing states a valuation. | Figures differ |
| Founder allegations | A July 2025 petition alleges Cathay AfricInvest and Adjuvant Capital sidelined the board, rejected a $110 million rescue package, imposed a 4x liquidation preference and forced the Nigerian subsidiary into bankruptcy. Untested allegations in a pending case. | Court filing, reported |
| Investor response | Adjuvant Capital told TechCabal it could not comment on matters before the court and works with local partners on the biobank. Cathay AfricInvest did not respond to requests for comment. | Investor-stated |
| Regulatory and trial record | No FDA clearance, no registered trial, no NIH or NSF award found. | Not found |
| Afterlife of the data | A Science paper published Aug 27, 2026 still lists 54Gene Inc., Washington, DC as an author affiliation, three years after the wind down began. | Public record |
Read plainly: the science was real and published, but small next to the promise. Two Form D filings account for almost all of the reported $45 million. The 100,000 genome programme produced one Nature Genetics comment, one 449 genome paper and a controlled-access deposit before the money ran out. Why it ran out is contested, and the contest is in court.
What to watch
- Judgment in the Lagos case. The injunction is interim and the allegations untested.
- Where the biobank ends up. Nigeria’s Data Protection Act of 2023 treats genetic information as sensitive personal data, and the National Health Act of 2014 restricts the sale of human tissue.
- Whether the EGA deposit stays reachable. Access requests route through named consortium contacts rather than a surviving institution.
- Whether participants ever receive the results and counselling the company promised to return.
- Syndicate Bio, and whether it publishes the stewardship plan 54gene did not leave behind.
In their words
“Drugs are not even made with Africans in mind, they are not trialled clinically with an African population, so what you have is drugs with lower efficacy for African populations and with poorer safety profiles”
Abasi Ene-Obong, founder and CEO, to the BBC, 2019 · Interview
“which is when you have a group come into Africa and take the research resources out of the continent without giving anything back to the continent”
Abasi Ene-Obong, defining helicopter science, IFC, 2020 · Interview
“Stopping this practice, while working to install adequate infrastructure to allow for all data generation from the samples being done in Africa, is important.”
Aminu Yakubu, VP research governance and ethics, GenomeWeb, 2022 · Independent
“Unfortunately, the company could not continue to operate financially, and it began to wind down in July”
Ron Chiarello, then CEO, TechCabal, September 2023 · Independent
“We should hold ourselves accountable to every study participant, business partner, investor, creditor, and the broader communities we serve.”
Abasi Ene-Obong, statement to TechCabal, August 2025 · Founder statement
“our priority is also to work with local partners to ensure the safety and viability of the biobank such that it remains available for the benefit of Nigeria and the broader African continent”
Adjuvant Capital representative, TechCabal, August 2025 · Investor statement
“For participants and research partners, 54gene’s collapse generated uncertainty about the status and future use of materials contributed under research-oriented consent processes.”
Alexis Walker, Frontiers in Genetics, March 2026 · Peer reviewed
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Stack Diagnostics, Inc., CIK 0001809111
- Public recordForm D, 54Gene, Inc., CIK 0001809111
- Public recordPromoting the genomic revolution in Africa through the Nigerian 100K Genome Project
- Public recordWhole-genome sequencing across 449 samples spanning 47 ethnolinguistic groups
- Public recordRecovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs
- Peer reviewedWhen genomics companies act as biobanks: governance challenges in an era of genomic assetization
- IndependentExclusive: After raising $45m in two years, 54Gene is shutting down
- IndependentNigerian court blocks sale of 54gene’s assets
- IndependentAfrican genomics startup 54gene lays off 95
- Independent54gene CEO steps down as the company looks to cut more jobs
- Independent54gene’s workforce got leaner amid a fresh change in management
- IndependentThe Demise Of 54gene: Insiders Trace How Boom Turned Bust
- Independent54gene Leads Consortium to Sequence 100K Nigerian Genomes
- IndependentHow decoding African DNA could help fight disease
- Company54gene Closes $25M Series B
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
