The Healthtech Podcast #437: The clinical trial system is broken and here’s why with Dr Elsa Zekeng from SökerData
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Mar 11, 2026 Dr Elsa Zekeng, infectious-disease scientist and founder of SökerData, builds inclusive health datasets to reduce bias in clinical trials. She recounts outbreak fieldwork, COVID vaccine advising, and how those experiences led her to aggregate data for women and global majority populations. The conversation covers trial inclusion criteria, biomarker differences by ethnicity, use cases in stroke and breast cancer, and where policy can drive change.
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Childhood Ant Experiment Sparked Lifelong Science Career
- Elsa Zekeng traced her scientific curiosity to a childhood experiment observing ants, which cemented a lifelong drive to test hypotheses.
- At seven she tested scotch bonnets on ants, got capsaicin in her eyes, and kept pursuing biology thereafter.
Ebola Deployment Exposed Troubling Trial Practices
- Elsa deployed to Guinea during the 2015 Ebola outbreak and witnessed clinical trials on the ground that raised ethical and inclusion concerns.
- She noticed trials with differing recovery rates and questioned continued enrollment in ones appearing ineffective.
Diverse Cohorts Reveal Unique Biomarkers
- Elsa's PhD showed biomarkers differ by ethnicity and gender, revealing patterns missed when datasets lack diverse cohorts.
- Her Senegal cohort added 56% Black ethnicity samples and found 11 proteins significantly different for flu biomarkers.