Ongoing Work
What We Know & What PMABC is doing about it.
Bridging the Gap
This Pfizer Institute of Translation Equitable Medicine (ITEM)-funded program is to educate and empower breast cancer patients in Ghana, Tanzania, and across sub-Saharan Africa to overcome the challenges associated with breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The project aims to:
- Accurately assess and document the extent of the challenges that breast cancer patients in Ghana and Tanzania face.
- Educate patients both newly diagnosed and those living with breast cancer, and the public using the developed educational material on how to navigate through breast cancer care.
- Create patient support groups at the national, regional, and district levels to assist patients in dealing with the challenges associated with breast cancer diagnosis and treatment and on how to navigate access to the healthcare system.
The African patient manual project
We are developing an extensive, easy-to-read and understandable, medically accurate, culturally sensitive, and appropriate patient educational manual that will be available to all breast cancer patients in sub-Saharan Africa. This is a Pfizer-funded project that will be launched at our annual conference in July.
Needs assessment for clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa
Updates to be shared soon
The Role of Western sub-Saharan Ancestry in the Biology of Triple-negative Breast Cancer (TNBC)
This multi-institution-funded project aims to identify biomarkers in the breast cancer stem cells of African tumors that will be targeted for therapy. Breast cancer stem cells represent a small subpopulation of cells in breast tumors that mediate tumor progression, metastasis, resistance to chemotherapy, and recurrence. Our previous work has shown (Multiethnic PDX models predict a possible immune signature associated with TNBC of African ancestry) that the immune processes that regulate these stem cells are genetic ancestry dependent. In this project, we are identifying markers in these stem cells from breast tumors across Africa that will be used for both risk assessment and target identification.
Visiting scholar program
Graduate students, early career researchers, residents, and other trainees are given the opportunity to learn in institutions outside their own. We have trainees visiting Henry Ford Health in the US for research and clinical training and also have trainees visiting other African countries.
Visiting professor program
This program allows experts from one African country to visit another African country where there is a need for training. This is a highly impactful program that shares the success stories of fellow African institutions and organizations. It fosters collaborations among African providers and researchers and gives an unparalleled local context. This is a program that will be expanded to include more countries in Africa. We also partner with global experts in our visiting professor program (pictures of visiting professor program) Dr. Evelyn Jiagge and Dr. Patrick Akakpo visited two of our partner institutions as part of the Visiting Professors Program to work with and share expertise with clinicians and researchers in Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC) and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences(MUHAS).
(picture of Dr. Allo teaching pathology residents at Techiman )