Brazil’s Genomes SUS project has sequenced 100,000 individual genomes since 2020, with R$1.37 billion invested in the initiative, according to journalist Marcelo Leite. The project is part of the Health Ministry’s Genomas Brasil program. Spending reached R$330 million last year, Leite wrote after attending the third Genomas SUS Symposium in Belém, which ended on Saturday, the 31st.
The project aims to bring precision medicine tools to the Unified Health System (SUS), Brazil’s public health network. Leite argues that expanding access matters because diagnostic technologies are becoming more common in private healthcare, while many Brazilians rely on the public system.
Genetic information can already help guide some treatments. Pharmacogenomics, for example, can indicate when a patient’s medication or dosage may need to be changed. Genetic testing can also help confirm diagnoses of rare diseases and, in some cases, inform expectations about how conditions such as type 2 diabetes may progress.
The initiative is not intended to sequence genomes without a specific purpose. Its strategy is to prioritize patients treated through SUS, whose health conditions are documented in the system. Researchers can use that information to study links between genetic variants and diseases.
A major challenge is the lack of genetic data that reflects Brazil’s diversity. Much of the large-scale research linking genomes to disease has focused on people of European ancestry, while Brazil has substantial African and Indigenous ancestry. Genomas SUS is establishing eight centers across the country to support equipment and standardized analysis methods.
Leite noted that precision medicine has been promised for decades but has yet to produce major results in routine patient care. He described the public health system as a logical place to begin building the research needed to make those benefits more widely available.
Sources: Folha Ciência.