Browsing by Author "Salhia, Bodour"
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Item Authorship patterns in cancer genomics publications across Africa(JCO Global Onco, 2021) Rotimi, Solomon O.; Rotimi, Oluwakemi A.; Salhia, BodourPURPOSE Authorship is a proxy indicator of research capacity. Understanding the research capacity is imperative for developing population-specific cancer control strategies. This is particularly apropos for African nations, where mortality from cancer is projected to surpass that from infectious disease and the populations are critically under-represented in cancer and genomics studies. Here, we present an analysis and discussion of the patterns of authorship in Africa as they pertain to cancer genomics research across African countries. METHODS PubMed metadata of relevant cancer genomics peer-reviewed publications on African populations, published between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 2019, were retrieved and analyzed for patterns of authorship affiliation using R packages, RISmed, and Pubmed.mineR. RESULTS The data showed that only 0.016% (n = 375) of cancer publications globally were on cancer genomics of African people. More than 50% of the first and last authors of these publications originated from the North African countries of Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and Algeria. South Africa (13.6% and 12.7%) and Nigeria (2.2% and 1.9%) were the Sub-Saharan African countries most represented by first and last authorship positions, respectively. The United States contributed 12.6% of first and last authored papers, and nearly 50% of all African countries had no contributing author for the publications we reviewed. CONCLUSION This study highlights and brings awareness to the paucity of cancer genomics research on African populations and by African authors and identifies a need for concerted efforts to encourage and enable more research in Africa, needed for achieving global equity in cancer outcomes.Item A Review of Cancer Genetics and Genomics Studies in Africa(Front. Oncol., 2021-02-15) Rotimi, Solomon O.; . Rotimi, Oluwakemi A; Salhia, BodourCancer is the second leading cause of death globally and is projected to overtake infectious disease as the leading cause of mortality in Africa within the next two decades. Cancer 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 treatment of cancers have been propelled by the understanding of the genetic make-up of the disease of mostly non-African populations. By the same token, there is a wide knowledge gap in understanding the underlying genetic causes of, and genomic alterations associated with, cancer among black Africans. Accordingly, we performed a review of the literature to survey existing studies on cancer genetics/genomics and curated findings pertaining to publications across multiple cancer types conducted on African populations. We used PubMed MeSH terms to retrieve the relevant publications from 1990 to December 2019. The metadata of these publications were extracted using R text mining packages: RISmed and Pubmed.mineR. The data showed that only 0.329% of cancer publications globally were on Africa, and only 0.016% were on cancer genetics/genomics from Africa. Although the most prevalent cancers in Africa are cancers of the breast, cervix, uterus, and prostate, publications representing breast, colorectal, liver, and blood cancers were the most frequent in our review. The most frequently reported cancer genes were BRCA1, BRCA2, and TP53. Next, the genes reported in the reviewed publications’ abstracts were extracted and annotated into three gene ontology classes. Genes in the cellular component class were mostly associated with cell part and organelle part, while those in biological process and molecular function classes were mainly associated with cell process, biological regulation, and binding, and catalytic activity, respectively. Overall, this review highlights the paucity of research on cancer genomics on African populations, identified gaps, and discussed the need for concerted efforts to encourage more research on cancer genomics in Africa