Researchers have identified genes that are more frequently altered in prostate tumors from men of African ancestry compared to other racial groups, in the largest study of its kind to date. The reasons for these differences is not known, say the researchers from Boston University School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, and Northwestern University.
None of the individual tumor genetic differences that were identified are likely to explain significant differences in health outcomes or to prevent Black Americans from benefiting from a new generation of precision prostate cancer therapies, the authors say, as long as the therapies are applied equitably.
The scientists found that the frequency of mutations in DNA repair genes and other genes that are targets of current therapeutics are similar between Black and White men with prostate cancer, suggesting that at least these classes of current precision prostate cancer therapies should be beneficial in people of both African and European ancestry.
- See “Largest-Ever Study of Prostate Cancer Genomics in Black Men IDs Potential Targets for Precision Therapies” by Nicholas Weiler on the University of California San Francisco website (July 10, 2020)
- See the full text of the scientific paper “Genomic Profiling of Prostate Cancers from Men with African and European Ancestry” by Yusuke Koga et al.
