MEDIA ADVISORY
Paper Title: Racial Disparity in Prostate Cancer in the African American Population Expanding on Actionable ideas and Novel Immunotherapies
Journal: Cancer Reports
Senior Author: Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, System Chair of the Department of Urology at the Mount Sinai Health System; Professor of Urology and Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Director of Center of Excellence for Prostate Cancer at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Additional Co-Authors: Dimple Chakravarty, PhD, Assistant Professor of Urology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Zachary S. Dovey, MD, Urologist, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Sujit S. Nair, PhD, Assistant Professor of Urology and Director of GU Immunotherapy Research, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Background: African Americans have higher rates of prostate cancer and are more likely to die from the disease than other groups in the United States, likely due to socioeconomic factors, healthcare access problems, and tumor biology.
Bottom Line: This review tackles the problem of racial disparity in prostate cancer in the African American population discussing and expanding on actionable ideas and novel immunotherapies, while also focusing on the biological differences in the development of prostate cancer across ethnicities.
What: The higher incidence and mortality of prostate cancer for African American men is well described. This review examines the molecular and genomic differences in prostate cancer between African Americans and Caucasian Americans to highlight novel treatments, including immunotherapies explicitly aimed at the African American population to reverse this disparity.
Why is this important: Recent evidence suggests equivalence in socioeconomic factors results in equal mortality outcomes for African American men with prostate cancer, but the higher incidence still remains. This review fundamentally contributes to the literature and provides specific guidelines for managing prostate cancer in African American men based on their disease biology. It will also provide a template for future research and publication in the ongoing fight to improve African American men’s disease outcomes.
Conclusions: Understanding the specific biology of prostate cancer in African American men and genomic profiling to integrate clinical and genomic data allows management planning for a precision medicine approach to treating African American men. It should contribute to ongoing efforts to improve outcomes in this population.
Said Dr. Tewari: In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of the significant research in recent years that has examined the molecular and genomic reasons for unequal cancer burden in African American and Caucasian American populations and acknowledge the challenges that lie ahead. This article provides specific guidelines for managing prostate cancer in African American men based on their disease’s biology and makes a significant contribution to the ongoing national effort to improve African American men’s outcomes from prostate cancer.
Review Article Link:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cnr2.1340
Relevant Social Media handles –
Twitter: @AshTewariMD; @MountsinaiUro; @CommsBio; @nresearchnews Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashutosh.tewari
Instagram: ashtewarimd
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ash-tewari-md-47
