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Review
. 2023 Nov;128(6):1011-1020.
doi: 10.1002/jso.27444.

The African Research Group for Oncology: A decade fostering colorectal cancer research in Nigeria

Anna J Dare  1 , Samuel A Olatoke  2 , Chukwuma E Okereke  3 , Fatimah B Abdulkareem  4 , Ademola Adeyeye  2 , Olawale Badejo  5 , Mengmeng Du  6 , Oluwaleke J Fayenuwo  7 , Bata M Gali  8 , Rivka Kahn  9 , Gregory Knapp  10 , Peter Ntiamoah  11 , Cristina Olcese  9 , Mobolaji A Oludara  12 , Adeleye Omisore  13 , Oluwatosin Z Omoyiola  14 , Israel A Owoade  7 , Murray F Brennan  15 , T Peter Kingham  15 , Olusegun I Alatise  16 ; African Research Group for Oncology (ARGO)
Affiliations
Review

The African Research Group for Oncology: A decade fostering colorectal cancer research in Nigeria

Anna J Dare et al. J Surg Oncol. 2023 Nov.

Abstract

The African Research Group for Oncology (ARGO) was formed in 2013 to undertake methodologically rigorous cancer research in Nigeria, and to strengthen cancer research capacity in the country through training and mentorship of physicians, scientists, and other healthcare workers. Here, we describe how ARGO's work in colorectal cancer (CRC) has evolved over the past decade. This includes the consortium's scientific contributions to the understanding of CRC in Nigeria and globally and its research capacity-building program.

Keywords: Nigeria; cancer research; colorectal cancer; global oncology; research collaborative.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
African Research Group for Oncology (ARGO) members, by state and geopolitical zone in Nigeria, 2023. The full list of Nigerian and North American ARGO institutions, by state and geopolitical zone is listed in Supporting Information: Appendix 1.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Mapping African Research Group for Oncology colorectal cancer (CRC) research activity to the four broad categories of cancer research.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Select key findings on the clinical and molecular epidemiology of colorectal cancer in Nigeria. ARGO’s first paper demonstrated that the stage of colorectal cancer presentation (A), and anatomic site of disease (B) were significantly different between a southwest Nigerian (n = 160) and a single institution North American cohort (n = 1947). Survival at 3 years after colorectal cancer diagnosis was also markedly different compared in Nigeria compared to the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) US database, for both regional and distant disease and on subgroup analysis (SEER-Black) (C). **Significantly different than both the seer-all and seer-black groups. (D) More recently, ARGO has demonstrated that the proportion of microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) in a Nigerian cohort is significantly higher than in other North American (MSKCC) and global (TCGA) genomic datasets, including when compared to African American (AA) populations in the United States (drawn from MSKCC and TCGA combined genomic datasets). ARGO, African Research Group for Oncology; MSKCC, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; MSS, microsatellite stable; TCGA, The Cancer Genome Atlas.
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References

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