Learn about MSK’s Global Cancer Disparities Initiatives (GCDI) and how they are improving cancer care across the world in low income countries, starting with colorectal cancer in Nigeria.
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DR. PETER KINGHAM
The vision here at MSK is to become the world's leading authority on cancer. Cancer can't just be a local or regional focus. It really needs to be a worldwide focus.
GCDI is really at the forefront of MSK pushing to try and improve our understanding of cancer, not just relying on the research we have here in New York, but trying to do this around the world.
The relationship with Isaac Alatise started with just the two of us looking at colorectal cancer in Nigeria and here. But we quickly realized that there were a lot of pertinent questions for cancer care in Nigeria that we wanted to help answer. So to do this, we founded a consortium called the African Research Group for Ecology, or ARGO, and that now has 25 Nigerian centers and several other centers in North America with MSK as the co-founder and lead.
This consortium has allowed us to create research infrastructure and has really become a model for how collaboration on cancer research globally can happen.
Our work in Nigeria has shown that you have to do work in different parts of the world to see how cancer acts in different environments and different cultures to truly understand what is the biology of cancer. We have aspirations to take this to other countries to show that this model works in multiple places.
Our hope is in the next five or ten years we can really grow GCDI to a much larger program with even a bigger impact.
