Overview
Cancer affects individuals of African ancestry in the United States disproportionately; as blacks have the highest death rate of any race and ethnicity from all cancer sites combined and lower five-year relative survival than whites for the majority of cancer sites. This disparity likely results from a complex interplay among biological, social, and structural factors, which all work collectively to generate race-related tumor aggressiveness.
Our work addresses the urgent need to interrogate novel molecular mechanisms of race-related prostate tumor aggressiveness, develop novel biomarkers of prostate tumor aggressiveness based on these mechanisms, modulate these mechanisms for therapeutic application, elucidate the importance of these mechanisms for response to current therapeutic strategies, and identify molecular, social and structural interactions that drive prostate cancer disparities.
Our ultimate goal is to improve outcomes for African Americans who suffer disproportionately from prostate cancer with implications for patients of all races with lethal disease.