 Moving on, we're going straight in order, correct? Okay, so our next presentation is Jane Peterson, giving a program update on the human heredity and health speaking of Africa, the H3Africa project. Can I take this, stick out? I have no idea. Of course, that's going to happen. It also should be removed, isn't it? No, that's fine. All right, I'm going to give you an overview about this program you've heard about, but I don't think we've ever given you a presentation about it. It's a human heredity and health in Africa, H3Africa. And this is a program, this is a combination of a common fund and institute funded program. How am I supposed to go forward and advance it? Oh, there I did. Okay, so as I said, this is a common fund initiated program and actually it grew out of the NHGRI interest generated by Dr. Charles Rotimi, who is a intramural investigator in NHGRI, and then of course, Francis has had an interest in this, so I'll tell you a little bit more about where it came from in a minute. But they recognize that there is a need for genomics initiative in Africa. Genetics and genomics in Africa is really very sparse. And other reasons that they were interested in starting this type of a program is the incredible disproportionate burden of communicable diseases in Africa. And of course, HIV, AIDS, TB and malaria dominate the research that's being done there. There has been recently an emergence of the prevalence of non-communicable diseases, which has gone really pretty much unstudied in the continent. And we believe that genomics is key to the contemporary and biomedical research that can be done on the continent. So in order to address this need, there was a group of meetings, set of meetings that I'll tell you about in a minute, from which came a working group of scientists on the continent as well as U.S. and British scientists or European scientists that put together a white paper and they identified genomics research as an important area that needed to be expanded in Africa. There was collaboration with African scientists at the time, but it was limited. And oftentimes the African scientists didn't get the credit that everyone felt needed to be, that they should get. And then also there's, you may be aware, looking around our universities, that there is a considerable brain dream going on in Africa. Many students come from Africa to be educated in the U.S. and they don't go back to Africa very often. And if they are trained in Africa, they very often get snapped up by North, as they call the U.S. in Europe, Northern universities. Africa also presents some unique research opportunities. African populations have the most genetic diversity. I don't need to tell this audience that. It's a unique place to study gene environment interactions because over the entire continent, there are so many different environments. And data on Africans are needed to achieve better ancestral representation in genomic studies. The number of African populations that have been tested so far as part of the HAPMAP and 1000 Genomes and other programs is not, is very small compared to the Caucasian populations and not representative of the diversity that exists in Africa. So the H3Africa initiative is intended to encourage contemporary research approach by African investigators to study genetic and or environmental determinants of common diseases in Africa with the goal of improving health of African populations. The goals of the program are to increase the number of African scientists that are internationally competitive in genomics and population research, to establish collaborative networks of Africans pursuing genomic-based research and disease-oriented projects. I'll mention this several times in my talk, but collaboration in Africa between universities or between countries is very rare, and this is one of the things that we really want to try to change or start to change. And then also we want to create and expand infrastructure for genomics research, particularly bioinformatics and biorepositories. You'll see as I go on that we don't have very much money to accomplish these goals, and building upon existing infrastructure is really critical. So thus far, what have we done? Mark Geier and I visited several places more than this, but these are four labs in Africa that we visited last March. In Nigeria, we saw a nascent biorepository being set up. You can see that the freezers are out, but there are also a lot of boxes sitting there. So a biorepository is one of the initiatives that we really want to get going, and this group has been funded by the University of Maryland actually to put a biorepository in place for a project that they were working on. In Tanzania, we visited a Julie McConney's lab, where we saw a significant amount of effort on sickle cell disease, and this is a representative of one of their workstations. In Mali, we visited an NIAID-supported research lab that works on malaria. They also took us out to a number of villages, which was really interesting, but this lab has been very well-equipped by NIAID over, I think it's 10 or more years. And then in South Africa, we visited the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, and that's Alan Christoffel sitting there, standing there, in front of their server room, which is fuller than it looks from this picture. But we were very impressed that the University of West Cape had set Alan up in this beautiful facility for training in bioinformatics and in recruiting people and developing programs, et cetera. So while we recognize from our visit that the conditions for research in Africa are not the same as what they are in the United States, South Africa certainly comes closer than the other countries, but there is significant infrastructure and there certainly is the brain power and the interest to do a genomics project in Africa. The other, I mentioned earlier that there's been a number of meetings. The program was launched in 2010 with a press release that had Eric and Francis, oops, sorry. Eric and Francis, Charles Rotimi and Dr. Mayosi from University of Cape Town and Mark Walport in London. The working groups I mentioned earlier got together for a final meeting in fall of that year and this was in Cambridge and developed this white paper which was then published in 2011 and then the first H3Africa, this was, well, the first H3Africa post white paper meeting was held in Cape Town. Actually Mark and I went there at the end of our set of site visits and that meeting ratified this white paper which is on the H3Africa website if you want to look at it. So the major thing we've been doing in this last year is writing concept after concept, defense after defense of the program and then RFAs. So we have spent a lot of time refining these ideas and finally getting them published as RFAs in the last month. So their initiatives are a set of collaborative projects which have multiple components represented by this little jigsaw puzzle. That will work together to implement and train genomics and genetics environmental research on the continent and to promote collaboration. Research projects are individual investigator initiated projects that will be an outgrowth of an existing ongoing NIH or other funding agency project that will bring genetics and genomics to that already funded project. And I'll tell you a little more about that in a minute. The Bioinformatics Network is a network of labs within the continent, around the continent that are interested in working together to train and to spread information and about the program as well as to build up the infrastructure for bioinformatics all over the continent. It will also tie together these research projects here. The Biorepository Initiative is an initiative to establish a biorepository, either one or two, on the continent that will be a site where H3Africa samples will reside so that Africans have more control or more ability to make decisions about what happens to their samples. And then societal implications research is introducing LC type grants into the African continent where some training in this has already happened. So key aspects of all these initiatives will be that the awards will be made directly to African institutes and PIs. The centers will, these are the collaborative centers I mentioned, will comprise multiple collaborative projects. So the idea here again is to have these be relatively large projects that will collaborate outside of their own institutions and hopefully internationally. And I should say that the US can be partners in these projects, but more than 51% of the funds must flow to African institutions. The research project grants will add a genomic lens to pre-existing projects, as I said a moment ago. The, all of the projects must deposit samples in the H3Africa biorepositories. They must use the H3Africa Bioinformatics Network for training, for information, for help with what's going on in their laboratories. They must include a training program and they may include societal implications research. Now these are the initiatives, one by one. The biorepository, as I said, is it comes from a strong desire to have African scientists retain control of their samples. The program is going to start with a two-year feasibility study. And that, after that feasibility study, it will be evaluated and some of those projects will be funded for full-scale repositories over the next five years. So it's a seven-year program. The Bioinformatics Network, it will be a foundation for bioinformatics capacity across Africa. It'll foster connectivity and interactivity, certainly within the H3Africa grantees, which I forgot to mention, will also include Welcome Trust grantees. This is a joint project between Welcome Trust and NIH. And it will provide training in bioinformatics and promote computational skills among African researchers. The Societal Implications Research will provide support for independent researchers. We felt that this was not ready for prime time yet, so we didn't put out an RFA this year. Instead, there will be a Societal Implications Research Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria in November, I believe. And from that, we will be talking with researchers who are interested in submitting applications and help them understand what needs to be in an application and what kinds of problems, questions would be of interest to H3Africa. And then the Societal Implications Program will also encourage the H3Africa consortium in developing its own policies. So the H3Africa timeline, we have already released most of the FOAs or RFAs that will be considered for funding in FY12. These are the collaborative centers I told you about. The research projects, the bioinformatics network, the bio-repository feasibility studies. In September 2011, just next week, Mark and I will, and several other NHGRI staff as well as NIH staff will be traveling to Nairobi, Kenya for an application, applicant information session, which will also be available by webinar and conference call. In November, we will have this Ethics and Genomics Research Conference in Abuja. No, yes, I think I said Blamako before, Abuja, Nigeria. And then in December 2011, the applications are due. They will be reviewed in March of next year. And by July, we hope to fund the center's research projects, the bioinformatics network and the bio-repositories. Then the Societal Implication Research RFAs will be released in FY13. Any questions? I had a question about the Societal Implications Research Meeting in Nigeria. Who has been invited to the meeting and you plan a subsequent request for proposal? What efforts will be made to ensure that maybe a broader array of persons other than those directly involved with the initiative? Aware of and have opportunities to be engaged. I'm going to turn to Jean McEwen who is running this part of the program. It's not on Jean. The meeting is actually being broadly advertised and it'll be really open to anyone within the continent of Africa who has an interest in this with, there are going to be some funds provided for some reimbursement of travel funds. There's actually a number of people who have already done research on various issues in bioethics, largely funded through the Forward Bioethics Training Initiatives. So a lot of those people will be involved as well as just others who are generally interested in the area. And I think the real purpose of the meeting actually is really to hear from them about their thoughts about what should go into the research agenda for this initiative in terms of the societal implications, not just sort of our coming in and telling them what we think the questions are, but really to learn from them. I should also say that we have a fairly extensive mailing list and we would welcome any suggestions of names that you would want us to send all the information to. Everything that I talked about, everything that we have done is posted on the H3Africa website which is h3africa.org. So we're trying to get the word out as broadly as we possibly can. Pilar? So I wanna start by saying I think this is a great idea, great program, love the fact that it's directed towards African investigators and empowering them to do genomic science. I think that's fantastic. And one of the things I've said to Eric is when H3 Latin America or South East Asia coming, the other question I have though is for US based investigators that wanna work in Africa, all of us have gotten, oh look at this H3Africa, you should be applying for this, this is great and it's obviously guys, this isn't for us, it's for the African based investigators to get their resources in line so that they can compete on an international stage. But it does raise the question about what is being thought about in terms of US based investigators for the reason that if one could imagine grants going through regular study section saying, well shouldn't this really be funded by H3Africa given all the impotence that's being put out there and the sort of misunderstanding that it's actually not for US based investigators. I was thinking we had a budget slide on here and some of the other presentations I've been working on for next week. This is funded at a level of about, I think the first year is $8 million. So there's very little money in it. It goes up to about $10 million as the year's advance. So that's one answer is H3Africa is not very big. And so it really is a token to try to get African researchers started and to be, as you said, competitive. Most of the grants and contracts funded in Africa are already two American investigators and the subcontracts are African. So you are free to submit applications as you want as they apply to infectious disease or whatever science of interest you want to do in Africa. At this point I would say there's probably not a groundswell to have an actual RFA for that. But H3Africa, as I said, 51% has to go to Africa. I am quite sure that multiple of these investigators will subcontract back to the US. So I would suggest that if you know someone, know something you're interested in. I mean, I actually think it would not, I think the point wasn't how do we sort of tap in and get some H3Africa money. On the contrary, wouldn't it be great to figure out a vehicle by which H3Africa funded investigators can, because it is such a small amount of money, network with all the people who are already funded and create a sort of larger impetus for making that happen. Well, that would be great. I think, and particularly your point about the unintended consequence of an H3Africa, it's a very good point. I don't personally haven't thought about it before, but I think you're absolutely right. On that point, let me just, you might wanna talk to folks at NIMH. They developed collaborative projects primarily around HIV with both India and South Africa. I was doing other NIMH funded research in South Africa at the time. So I was aware of what they were doing, where they brought groups of US based researchers with the local researchers and had a research meeting discussing the issues and out of which the desire was for collaborative projects to grow. And I think both the India and South Africa experience work very well and stimulate in a lot of research there. We have talked to NIMH and they are one of the participants. Well, they're not a direct participant. They are funding a, it may be one of these collaborative projects. I don't think it's been reviewed yet, but they are very interested in supporting a project of this sort in their area of interest. And assuming it gets funded, we'll bring it in. So that we intend that the H3 Africa umbrella encompass any research project and research group that is interested in this area, not only the ones that are directly funded by H3 Africa. In fact, some of the most sophisticated research going on in Africa is in agriculture. And we expect that there will be groups interested in agriculture that join the Bioinformatics Network. And you mentioned just sort of in passing that you had spent a lot of time defending this program. Would you like to say a little bit more? Like, who is concerned about it or against whom are you defending? There's been concern at the level of sending money outside the United States. A concern about sustainability, which is completely legitimate. A concern about, you know, will we be able to establish something, especially by our repository, in a way that it can actually support itself when NIH leaves. So I think we've allayed most of those concerns. And we feel like we're in a good situation going forward. But I have to say that the amount of funding makes it more difficult. Although we have successfully encouraged and gotten the Common Fund to give us a small amount of additional funds. The other thing to add to it is it became clear from our early discussions around the NIH on the best use of the Common Fund money was to, as Jane described, put this towards infrastructure and hope that institutes would come and do specific scientific projects and disease areas of interest. And so you would sort of have matching money. And we went around the three of us, Mark, Jane and I, hours and hours of times of meetings with each, you know, 10 institutes or something. And we got warm, receptive, you know, interactions with them. But when it really came time to commit dollars into, maybe as opposed to, well, maybe someday, yeah, sure, you build it and we'll see later. We were, to be candid, a little disappointed with the number of commitments we were able to get. Admittedly, this is in the face, you heard my budgetary discussion. So it's really, people are, and, you know, and some of these institutes have major commitments in Africa as it is. So they're sort of feeling like, well, we already have our own programs. That was what it was a little disappointing that we, but there's a lot of reasons for it. But we have enough to go forward and then others will follow. Jane, at eight to 10 million per year NIH funding, and if so, what's the trust committed? The trust is about 12 million pounds over, we never know how many years to say. Eight million pounds, 12 million dollars. 12 million dollars over three or five years. It's not clear yet. And their call is also out, their call for proposals. You can find it on the H3Africa website. And it's being done at the same time ours is being done slightly differently where they're, they kind of get pre-proposals and they select some of those and they do a rigorous review of that. Is there going to be some effort at coordination between the two? Oh, yes. In terms of what is funded, I mean. Oh, yes. And applicants can apply to both programs and then at the time that we are ready to, once we know the, we will talk together about who should be funding what. It's like NSF and NIH when we have joint proposals. The schedules for the Welcome Trust call and our solicitations were designed so that the funding decisions will be made at about the same time. Is there any thought about regional distribution of research funds or since Africa is such a diverse place? Biorepository. Yes. That's come up over and over again. Should we have regional bioinformatics? Should we have regional biorepositories? I think we have to see what we get in and what does well. And in the case of the biorepository, the ability of a biorepository to receive and distribute samples is going to trump anything else to some extent. So, yeah. There's been lots of talk about that. Certainly we in a perfect world, we would want to try to see that the projects are well distributed and I hope that's the way the applications come in, but we really don't know yet. Bill, I think we were originally envisioning that the collaborative research centers would operate and form regional nucleus for research. Interestingly enough, the initial contacts we've had expressions of interest involve groups that are very widely distributed around the content. One of the things that I'm sure you're hearing back is I am about Africans actually live in Africa is that they would like to see a non-South African focus, but they're also quite concerned that most of the activity they're seeing is from people who no longer live in Africa but are from there originally and to the point where words like disgusting and I've been used on a regular basis. And one of the things that a welcome is considering now is having not only a 51% rule and maybe even ratcheting that down but also making it so a certain percentage of the money has to be spent in Africa because of the worry that South Africans living in Canada will be getting the grants and really just using it as a trough not as a real research tool. There's a lot of sensitivity there and I'm sure you're well aware of it. We were at the same meeting in Cape Town in March and there's a lot of expectations been built up because of H3 Africa by Africans and if we end up funding a bunch of people who used to be from Africa there's going to be a lot of really pissed off people. Well they can't be the PIs at all. No. They can be the largest snout. Yeah. And certainly we'll see how the review group goes but I would think there might be a sensitivity to that not only at the review level but at the funding level. So again Howard the point is that these awards are going to be made directly to African institutions not necessarily to scientists but to African origin. They have to go to the funds go to Africa and then any decision about collaborations outside of Africa are made by the African investigators themselves by their choice. And before we go to the next question Jane can you clarify because the council is clear showing significant interest in this. The grants will come to this council? Yes. Next May. So May 2012. So the grants and non-infectious disease and as we need to we'll supplement with people that So these legitimate concerns you will have the ability to weigh in at a council level which is terrific. Pearl? Yeah I mean the bio repository seems so important. Is that a grant that will go to a specific institution or will that be more of an umbrella one? My concern being you have a continent where there's very different regulations you have South Africa which is tighter than we are you know just with the governance what the informed consent will be. This is a major major issue in that RFA we hope to fund more than one we hope geographically those will be spread out they have to be able to receive and distribute samples so and we could receive an application that proposed three sites around Africa for example that would be fine and we'll make that clear I guess next week I'm not sure it said that explicitly in the RFA so it is going to be a difficult thing to set up that's why we're starting with planning grants so that we can set in place four different places that we'll have to demonstrate what's feasible for them to do on the ground before we scale up into larger scale biorepositories Jane maybe you mentioned this and I missed it but I just wonder how the availability of these grants was publicized I was in the car in March talking with some malaria collaborators of mine there's also a group there working in HIV they were completely unaware well they're just impolished to be fair so I understand but what I'm worried about is how the word is going to get out beyond those few groups that are already in the know Africa is a big country continent this particular these particular groups that I met with in March they are much less well equipped than the pictures that you just showed us and could benefit tremendously by being involved and I just worry that they'll never learn about these things so first of all give us their names that's the first step we have collected we have the group of people who came to Cape Town we have asked institutes to send out to any grantees or any one they know on the continent we've also just set up a where's Changi what's the name of the site the social networking site we can't hear you the African site of human genetics obviously sends out information to all of their members we have their entire mailing list yes so as Jane mentioned we've sent it up to a lot of mailing lists including the welcome trust mailing list which is international and last week we set up a social networking site on nature it's called Sightable and it's a collaborative research site where we already have over 20 members which is really exciting considering our site is only up for 3 days and their PIs are actually already discussing if I'm interested in this FOA I'm in Ghana is anyone else interested in joining us and maybe starting something in Kenya and we can apply together for the FOA then we also have the meeting coming up in Kenya which has also generated a lot of interest so we're trying to do whatever we can think of if you have any good ideas that we're missing please let us know and Jill I think you raised an interesting important point about groups that may be not as well set up as groups that other groups and that is a serious issue is to whether you support groups that have already shown capability or whether you help other groups start out from scratch and we're trying to walk that line but the idea is that whatever gets funded we'll have to have an outreach component and we'll have to try we're hoping that this relatively small program is going to be catalytic at the very least you want to make sure that those less well-equipped groups have the opportunity to connect through this vehicle that's in part what the collaborative nature of this is supposed to encourage and it may have to be a push rather than a pull from the well-equipped groups yeah and I see the bioinformatics network as being a real key in reaching these groups that aren't very well-equipped they have enough money that they should be able to improve infrastructure in those sorts of sites and we hope that we'll get a really active PI institution that will really believe in this mission and really push to collaborate and connect with these remote sites this has been great discussion any last comments or questions ok thank you for that input