Proceedings of the Second Annual International African-Caribbean Cancer Consortium Conference held in Miami, FL, USA last May (12–13 May 2008), have just been published as supplement of the IAC journal.

The Conference has been very stimulating and interesting, spanning from epidemiology to molecular biology. It is highly relevant to study populations with African background outside of Africa. When we refer to sub-Sahara diseases (including cancer, as Burkitt’s Lymphoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma, etc ..) we often refer to local viral diseases, local cofactors (i.e. malaria), local infectious diseases (i.e. parasites, with Th2 polarization) etc.. To study African-populations outside of Africa will contribute to show the relevance of genetic factors involved in pathogen susceptibility (i.e. North to South gradient of HHV8 infection and the related KS), in disease incidence and/or progression to chronic as well as neoplastic lesions.

On such subject it could be of some interest also to refer to the article on "Genetic studies of African populations: an overview on disease susceptibility and response to vaccines and therapeutics" recently published by Sirugo et al., in Hum Genet (2008) 123:557–598.

A special thanks to the two editors: Camille Ragin and Emanuela Taioli.