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The European–Latin American Consortium towards Eradication of Preventable Gallbladder Cancer, EULAT Eradicate GBC, is collecting high-quality data and samples in four Latin American countries with high gallbladder cancer incidence (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru) to build a unique biorepository integrated into a tailored IT platform, to identify, validate, and functionally characterize new risk biomarkers, and to develop prediction models that integrate epidemiological and genetic–molecular risk factors. We decided to develop an application for electronic data collection to facilitate the retrieval of sociodemographic, clinical, lifestyle, dietary, and sample-related information from 15,000 Latin American study participants. The application EULAT eCollect will facilitate the work of study nurses, reduce time spent by participants, limit the use of paper and ink, minimize costs and errors associated with filling out written forms and subsequent digitisation, and support the monitoring of local recruitment rates and data quality. We describe in this article the design and implementation of the EULAT eCollect application, which started with the specification of functional and non-functional requirements, and ended with the implementation and validation of four separate application modules: Socio-Demographic Interview, Sample Information, Case Report Form, and Food-Frequency Questionnaire. We present both general and technical results, and our experience with the free and open-source software, Open Data Kit (ODK), which may be of interest for future related research projects, especially those on personalised cancer prevention carried out in low- and middle-income regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent studies have shown that genetic alterations are associated with the effect of patient geographic location on gallbladder cancer development. Peru has a high incidence of gallbladder cancer, but causative factors have not yet been identified. We examined the frequency of mutations in TP53 and K-ras genes in Peruvian patients with gallbladder cancer, and compared this with data from Bolivia, Hungary, Chile, and Japan, which have a high gallbladder cancer incidence. Methods: DNA was extracted from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded gallbladder tissue sections of 30 gallbladder cancer patients (9 men and 21 women) obtained using microdissection. Mutations in exons 5 to 8 of TP53 and codons 12, 13, and 61 of K-ras were examined using direct sequencing. Results: TP53 mutations were observed in 10 (33.3%) of patients, but K-ras mutations were absent. Nine (90%) TP53 mutations were point mutations (7 missense and 2 silent mutations), and the most frequent substitution was a G:C to A:T transition. G:C to A:T transitions at the CpG site or G:C to T:A transversions were found in one patient each. No significant differences were found in the frequency of TP53 and K-ras mutations among patients in the 5 countries. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that endogenous mechanisms and exogenous carcinogens may affect the carcinogenic process in Peruvian gallbladder cancer patients, similar to that in Bolivian patients. Further studies with a larger sample size are needed to clarify these findings., (Creative Commons Attribution License)