Olink: Revolutionising Disease Research in Africa

In this episode of the Africa Biotech Conversation podcast, host Adrienne Leussa speaks with Cindy Lawley, Sr Director, Global Population Health of the Proteomics Company, Olink.  Cindy shares insights on her background, the technology of Olink, and its potential impact on understanding genetic risks of diseases. In this episode, we learn of the first deployment of Olink's technology on the African continent at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) in Cape Town, South Africa.  Cindy joined Olink in 2020 soon after the launch of the Explore Platform that leverages Next Generation Sequencing as a high throughput proteomic readout.  At Olink, she drives population health initiatives, working closely with the UK Biobank, FinnGen, SCALLOP and other large cohort studies.  Prior to Olink, Cindy spent 14 years at Illumina and together with customers, she helped develop solutions to better understand genetic risk in diverse populations and holds several Excellence in Technology Transfer awards for her work leading Illumina's Consortia Program.  Cindy is passionate about innovation to make multiomic technologies easier and cheaper to measure.  Such advances are essential to lower barriers to implement scalable, reproducible discoveries that can be translated to the clinic to drive individualized medicine and health equity.  Main Topics Covered:  Cindy Lawley's background and work with Illumina  The importance of studying diverse populations to understand the impact of genetics to health  The Olink platform as a scalable tool for protein analysis to understand disease phenotype  Case studies of Olink's use around the world  The first deployment of the Olink technology on the African continent  The potential advantages of employing proteomics in Africa's biopharma startups.  Career advice for women and recent graduates The human capacity and intellectual capabilities in the biotech space in Africa  Links to publications mentioned in the interview:  SCALLOP website: https://olink.com/our-community/scallop/  SCALLOP Nature Metabolism paper Folkersen et al 2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7611474/  54gene preprint Biddanda et al 2022 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.09.519773v1  UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project Preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.17.496443v1  Cohen et al 2005 on PCSK9 and LDL in African population: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15654334/