CapTC Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Book Launch, Fundraising to Intensify Prostate Cancer Research

Ayodeji Ake

In commemoration of its 20th anniversary, the Prostate Cancer Transatlantic Consortium (CapTC) launched a legacy book documenting its history, global impact, and future goals, and fundraising to intensify research for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Speaking at the anniversary held in Lagos recently, Founder of the consortium, Prof. Folakemi Odedina, noted the book highlights new directions in genetic, behavioral, and clinical research, while introducing CapTC Next Generation, a program to empower younger researchers across Africa, including Francophone countries.

“Through the grace of God, at the beginning of the first two to three years, I made personal sacrifices. My husband and I were using our money to fund the research we conducted across Africa. From there, we were able to get money and funding to the tune of millions of dollars, but don’t forget, all these started from personal sacrifices.

“Then, second is infrastructure, as it is important that before you can do research, you have to have the right infrastructure. If there is going to be any funding to any low-resource country, there has to be infrastructure, and when I say infrastructure, it goes beyond the hard-core infrastructure. It also means building the resources and the expertise, so we make sure that every meeting that we have always has a training programme,” she said.

Further speaking, Odedina said the consortium has done well in bringing clinical trials to Nigeria and Africa.

“We have made differences over the years. One of the most significant differences we have made has to do with research, because you have to research to have evidence on how to better prevent the diseases, what to do to control the diseases, and treat the disease. We have made a lot of differences in the areas of clinical trials. One of the areas people in Nigeria struggle with is bringing clinical trials to Nigeria, Africa. Our consortium has brought multiple research projects, millions of dollars in research, in biomedical research,” she said.

To prevent prostate cancer, Prof. Clayton Yates harped on early detection by encouraging men to visit the hospital for screening.

“We need education, we need to inform men about prostate cancer. What we do know is that if men are diagnosed with prostate cancer early, it can be treated and that person can be cured. So education is the key. The second thing is better treatment. And treatment that works in the western world might not fit here in Africa, so we need to make sure that the treatment is tailored to the community; we can all do it if we come together; it is doable,” he said.

On his part, Prof. Solomon Rotimi of Covenant University highlighted the advances made in understanding prostate cancer in Nigerian men.

“Twenty years later, our consortium was the first to demonstrate the genetic characteristics of prostate cancer as occurs in Nigerian men, and the importance of that is based on that genetic information. We understood that there are classes of drugs that Nigerian men will benefit from; without this information, those stages of prostate cancer would have been classified as untreatable. When you do more research, as we have done, you can identify new ways to treat these diseases. We have also identified the importance of Vitamin D in controlling prostate cancer, in reducing the aggravation of that disease,” he said.