Yuri Clement, a professor of pharmacology at the Trinidad campus of the University of the West Indies, is leading an ECHORN pilot project on precision medicine. He is looking at biomarkers for type 2 diabetes among his more than 180 patients in Trinidad to determine how they react to the drug Metformin. For Clement, involvement in ECHORN and the Yale-TCC was a way to gain insight into how his research can be contextualized on a regional and global scale.

“I was able to get a broad grasp of what [ECHORN] is trying to do in the different territories in the region,” said Clement. “It made me feel as if I am a part of a bigger [picture] looking at bigger issues in terms of [Metformin] response in people who are considered minorities in the US.”

Clement said his trip to Maryland in 2018 was key to his understanding of the broader Yale-TCC network. He met members of the ECHORN team and looked at the wider database of information on the Caribbean collected by the Yale-TCC. Clement said this gave him insight into how large-scale projects are managed.

Current data on responses to Metformin is based primarily on Caucasian populations. Clement said this makes it insufficient for determining how other ethnicities may be affected. Given that most of the participants in Clement’s study are of African or Asian Indian descent, his research may be able to prevent escalation of diabetic complications in minority groups early on.

“I can actually put something forward in terms of policy if the results hold true that there is a connection between drug failure and polymorphisms,” explained Clement. A genetic polymorphism is a type of variation in DNA sequence common in a given population. “There [could] be a change in attitude...so that maybe we would not see many people having aputations, kidney failure or dying early from other complications from diabetes.”

A grant from the National Institutes of Health was instrumental for funding Clement’s project. He said Dr. Saria Hassan guided his team through the process of applying for an NIH grant for the first time. This gave him exposure to how US funding operates and how progress is monitored in research.

“Even when [the grant] was approved and finances came in, [Dr. Hassan] kept in contact to determine whether the funding was available,” said Clement. “That helped us because sometimes you have so much work to do and you can forget that you need to monitor yourself and your progress...That helped me be a stickler for making sure things are done on time.”