By Adedapo Adesanya
Following the announced exit of Dr Abasi Ene-Obong as CEO of 54gene, a Nigerian health tech company, the company says it plans to restructure its business across a number of departments and geographies.
The company CEO’s resignation is coming after the announcement of the second round of layoffs on the back of the laying off of 95 employees as revenue from COVID-19 testing dwindled in August.
54gene’s General Counsel, Ms Teresia L. Bost, will take over as interim CEO, and Dr Ene-Obong will continue to support the company as Senior Advisor and remain on 54gene’s Board of Directors.
“Teresia and Delali bring decades of experience in building and scaling high-impact global pharma companies, and they also have deep insight into the workings of 54gene. I am excited to see them take the company to its next phase,” Dr Ene-Obong said.
It was not disclosed why Dr Ene-Obong is stepping down, but the company’s recent struggles are likely to be a contributing factor. After the recent layoff, there were allegations of financial impropriety levelled against the co-founder, which were not proven.
This announcement comes barely one month after Ogochukwu Osifo, 54gene co-founder and vice president of engineering, announced his departure from the organisation in a LinkedIn post.
Mr Osifo explained in his post that he was leaving 54gene “to pursue other interests.” His LinkedIn profile has been updated to include a new role as “Chief Executive Officer at Rayda.”
54gene says it will now focus “on its core mission of African genomics research and equalizing precision medicine.”
“Going forward, the primary focus will be on the unique genomic research the company has started by further leveraging its genomic datasets derived from 54gene’s state-of-the-art biobank, that currently houses over 130,000 unique patient samples and corresponding genomic data, all with the objective of positioning the company to make contributions to precision medicine and drug discovery. This continues the meaningful work the company has invested in, whilst de-emphasising the clinical diagnostic business line at this time,” the statement read.
In September 2021, 54gene raised $25 million in a Series B round that brought the company’s total investment to over $45M since it was founded in 2019. Investors in the company include Y Combinator, Adjuvant Capital, Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund (CAIF), among others.
