Burkitt lymphoma research in East Africa: highlights from the 9(th) African organization for research and training in cancer conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2013.

Kenneth O Simbiri,Cristina D Stefan,Detra Robinson,Joshua Biddle,Robert Newton,Nestory Masalu,Sam M Mbulaiteye,Tobias Kinyera,Joe Harford,Esther Kawira,Constance Tenge,Peter Odada Sumba,Janet Lawler-Heavner,Pamela Akinyi Were,Kishor Bhatia,Franco M Buonaguro

doi:10.1186/1750-9378-9-32

Abstract

A one-day workshop on Burkitt lymphoma (BL) was held at the 9th African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) conference in 2013 in Durban, South Africa. The workshop featured 15 plenary talks by delegates representing 13 institutions that either fund or implement research on BL targeting AORTIC delegates primarily interested in pediatric oncology. The main outcomes of the meeting were improved sharing of knowledge and experience about ongoing epidemiologic BL research, BL treatment in different settings, the role of cancer registries in cancer research, and opportunities for African scientists to publish in scientific journals. The idea of forming a consortium of BL to improve coordination, information sharing, accelerate discovery, dissemination, and translation of knowledge and to build capacity, while reducing redundant efforts was discussed. Here, we summarize the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Highlights

On November 20, 2013, scientists from 13 institutions held a one-day pre-conference workshop during the 9th African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) conference in Durban, South Africa (Additional file 1: Table S1) [1]
The workshop was motivated by a positive response to a successful 3-hour satellite meeting organized by Epidemiology of Burkitt Lymphoma in East-African Children and Minors (EMBLEM) at the 8th AORTIC conference in 2011 in Cairo, Egypt to highlight research sponsored by the Intramural Research Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in East Africa and in Ghana
The objectives are to investigate the link between infections with Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and genetic risk factors with BL

Summary

Introduction

On November 20, 2013, scientists from 13 institutions held a one-day pre-conference workshop during the 9th African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) conference in Durban, South Africa (Additional file 1: Table S1) [1]. To generate accurate cancer statistics (incidence and mortality), the population at risk that is covered by a particular registry needs to be defined, and all the cases occurring in the population need to be identified Both definition of population at risk and obtaining complete cancer data are difficult to achieve in Africa given the lack of accurate census data for most countries [43,44], and the low level of service provision or access. On the question of a BL specific consortium versus an all cancer consortium, Dr Harford suggested staying focused and limiting the consortium to BL He encouraged the researchers to define metrics for assessing success, e.g., establishing a bioinformatics infrastructure or a tissue repository, such as is being done for the Human Heredity and Health (H3) African project and nurturing and supporting investigators to obtain independent funding, such as from the BIG CAT grants

Conclusion

Findings

Ziegler JL