Our Team

Eshara Chotoo founded Antares Genomics with a determination that continues to shape the company: where a person lives should not determine whether they can benefit from the future of medicine, and her conviction to address the underrepresentation of African populations in genomic reference data sets and clinical trials. Her journey into genomics began in law and entrepreneurship, bringing a perspective that looks beyond the technology to the people, partnerships and practical changes needed to make change possible.

Her goal is not simply to introduce advanced genetic tests to African markets. It is to help build an African precision-medicine sector capable of delivering affordable diagnostics locally, leading scientific discovery and retaining the knowledge and value that discovery creates within the populations that they were created from.

For Eshara, access and ownership belong together. Africa must be able to benefit from genomic medicine — and help determine its direction.

Eshara’s work brings together company strategy, clinical implementation, technology development and partnership building. She has helped assemble a multidisciplinary network around Antares, connecting scientific and clinical expertise with the practical work of introducing genomics into healthcare. That work has progressed into pharmacogenomic testing and the training and mentoring of pharmacists to support its use in practice.

Her focus is on what happens beyond the laboratory: whether a clinician can use the information, whether a patient understands the next step, and whether the service can be delivered sustainably to more people.

She also serves as Chief Executive Officer of Antares Global Precision Medicine Company and Chairperson of the Africa and Global Precision Medicine Consortium, connecting the wider initiative’s commercial development with its research and stewardship goals.

At the centre of Eshara’s long-term vision is the 108,000 Africa Genomes Project: a planned initiative to bring together participation across 54 African countries, building collective scale while respecting local priorities, expertise and data governance.

Through this project, she is working towards a future in which African countries do more than contribute samples. They help define the research questions, lead the discoveries, develop diagnostic solutions and ensure that the resulting benefits reach their populations.

Her legal background informs her commitment to responsible data stewardship, informed consent, intellectual property and equitable benefit sharing. Her approach to international collaboration is equally clear: partnerships should strengthen African capability and scientific leadership, not substitute for them.

Under her leadership Antares is scaling access to precision medicine through Antares Genomics’ established testing programmes, working with local and international researchers, clinicians and Pharmacy at SPAR. In parallel, she is advancing the Africa Genomes Project through collaborations spanning 12 African countries.

Eshara has taken to the global stage many times, presenting the Africa Genomes Project at the International Society of Pharmacovigilance’s Africa Chapter meeting, the World Drug Safety Congress Americas and SACO 2025. She was invited to BOMA UNGA, New York, and the Hamburg Sustainability Conference in Germany, to strengthen the project’s international support network, and supported the Second East Africa Pharma & Biotech Conference in Rwanda. At the launch of Kenya’s Young Pharmacists Group she introduced the clinical utility of pharmacogenetic testing, and has since presented it at many doctor workshops and events.

Her wider engagement includes committee discussions in Senegal on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa and the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization framework, examining barriers and opportunities in Africa’s pharmaceutical manufacturing and regulatory landscape.

Aiming to establish inclusivity and international alignment she has contributed to STRIPE’s clinical utility workshop, informing Antares’ alignment with international pharmacogenomics practice. Co-led by the American Society of Pharmacovigilance, with participation from the FDA and U.S. Pharmacopeia, STRIPE brings together public- and private-sector stakeholders to advance standards for pharmacogenomic testing, clinical utility and reporting, so that Pharmacogenomics in Africa is implemented with the same scientific leadership as elsewhere in the world.

She regularly engages with key opinion leaders and Ministries of Health to strengthen data governance, champion an African-led precision medicine agenda, and provide solutions that address the data gaps that perpetuate bias and underrepresentation in AI-driven healthcare.

Alongside this work, she is pursuing more affordable testing and stronger local diagnostic capacity, one of the biggest barriers to entry for local patient benefits, with the objective of making precision medicine accessible and useful within African healthcare settings. Her approach connects scientific discovery with the infrastructure, expertise and clinical support needed to translate it into patient benefit.

Her work connects representation with capability and agency: Africa contributing to healthcare innovation on terms that strengthen its institutions, recognise its expertise and deliver value to its people.

Eshara’s vision combines the discipline of building a sustainable business with a commitment to wider healthcare access. Success means more than growing Antares. It means stronger local expertise, testing closer to home, discoveries translated into useful care, and communities benefiting from the science they help make possible.

Her determination is to help build an Africa that does not have to wait for the future of medicine to arrive — but has the capability and ownership to create it.