Mount Sinai identifies the causes of racial disparity in prostate cancer in a multi-institutional study

MEDIA ADVISORY

Senior Author:  Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, Professor and System Chairman of the Milton and Carroll Petrie Department of Urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Director of the Center of Excellence for Prostate Cancer at the Tisch Cancer Institute

Bottom Line: Biological characteristics of prostate tumors were substantially different in African-American men (AAM) when compared to European-American men (EAM).

What: In this multi-institute retrospective analysis of prostate cancers from African-American men and European-American men, we identified race specific unique gene expression alterations and pathways that can potentially contribute to racial disparities.

Why Is the Study Important: This study unravels gene expression alterations and tumor specific factors that contribute to racial disparities in prostate cancer.  This study demonstrated that European- American men and African-American men groups have distinct genomic profiles, with clinical implications for managing active surveillance, adjuvant treatment, recurrence management, and metastatic disease treatment. More specifically, it showed that characterizing the clinicopathological variables between African-American men and European- American men revealed that being (AAM) are associated with more aggressive clinical disease and have a higher genomic risk for prostate cancer. The results of the study provide compelling evidence suggesting that African-American men should be carefully monitored post treatment.

Who: A multi-institutional retrospective analysis of 1,152 patients—596 African-American men  and 556 European-American men who underwent radical prostatectomy.

Paper Title:  Comparative Analysis of 1,152 African-American and European-American Men with Prostate Cancer Identifies Distinct Genomic and Immunological Differences

Said Dr. Ash Tewari about the study:

“Racial disparity in prostate cancer is a significant problem and Mount Sinai’s Department of Urology has focused its efforts to better understand the causes of racial disparity in order to find a solution. In this manuscript, we investigated genomic differences in cancer between two different races of men, African-American men and European-American men in this collaborative multi-institutional retrospective study of 1152 patients men who underwent radical prostatectomy. We found that the tumor characteristics (or tumor genomic factors) were substantially different between the two races. Specifically, we found that tumors in African- American men had higher expression of genes related to immune response and inflammation and lower expression of DNA mismatch repair genes.”

Journal: Communications Biology

Review Article Link:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02140-y#citeas

Relevant Social Media handles –

Twitter: @AshTewariMD; @MountsinaiUro; https://www.facebook.com/ashutosh.tewari @ashtewarimd