1st First EU Africa PerMed Webinar: “Oncology: Personalised Medicine approach”

Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide and is expected to surpass infectious disease as the leading cause of mortality in Africa within the next two decades.

It is a group of genomic diseases that presents with intra- and inter-population unique phenotypes. At large, the prevention and personalized treatment of cancers have been driven by the understanding of the genetic make-up of the disease of mostly non-African populations. For this, it is needed to address the knowledge gap in understanding the underlying genetic causes of, and genomic alterations associated with, cancer among black Africans.

Lastly, it is related to disparities that include socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, and cultural factors that differ between low and high-income countries.

Retinoblastoma is the most common cancer in the paediatric population and Wilms tumor (WT) is the most common renal malignancy of childhood. Both with global disparities reported indicating highest incidence and lowest survival in sub-Saharan Africa.

Recently studies are focused on identifying the constitutional mutations within the African populations.