Collaborative Projects at the CPGR

Typically, large-scale custom projects are collaborative in nature and long-term based. We design, plan, and execute complex omics projects to the satisfaction of owners and consortia members. The CPGR aims to demonstrate how large-scale Omics can be done in Africa with the involvement of an international consortium.

Through driving large collaborative projects, the CPGR is able to ensure research expertise remains relevant in both a local and international context.

MADCaP

The Centre for Proteomic and Genomic Research (CPGR), is a collaborator on the US National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute funded research grant: Genetic Epidemiology of Prostate Cancer in Africa, U01-CA184374.

This flagship project, which is part of the Men of African Descent Carcinoma of the Prostate (MADCaP) network, is led by the Program Director Dr Timothy Rebbeck, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Boston, MA, USA. The investigators in the MADCaP consortium are interested in understanding the complex multifactorial causes of prostate cancer etiology and outcomes among men of African ancestry worldwide, thereby collaborating on epidemiologic studies to address the high burden of prostate cancer among this population.

The role of the CPGR is to coordinate biospecimen preparation and logistics across seven African centres (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa) and perform the genotyping for over 5,000 samples on the custom developed MADCaP Axiom array which offers over 1.5 million markers and an imputation-aware GWS grid that tags over 94% of variants commonly found in African populations.

This is among the first research grants where the large scale genotyping component is performed on the African continent! The research grant began in August 2015 and will build on partnerships and collaborations established well into the future.

DIPLOMICS

DIPLOMICS is a DSI funded infrastructure program that aims to connect researchers with a network of world-class omics facilities in South Africa.

The driving ambition behind DIPLOMICS is to facilitate this network in becoming internationally competitive through a number of different relevant interventions. These interventions are identified by the working groups within the network. There are three main pillars in the DIPLOMICS network:

Each of these pillars has their own working group. The function of these working groups is to understand the structural issues that these facilities and their users are facing and to try and address them in a manner that can help improve the network as a whole.