It will be the 1st Webinar in a series of webinars and training activities with the objective to support the translation of Personalised Medicine research into practice and to create network between European and African researchers.

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, with Black populations having the burden of morbidity and mortality for most types. 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.

The EU-Africa PerMed project is part of the ICPerMed family. Its overall aim is the integration of African countries into ICPerMed activities, thus contributing to a successful implementation of Personalised Medicine (PM) in the global context.

Date and Time:

May 17, 2022, 12:00 CET

Further information:

More details are available on the EU-Africa PerMed website here.