More must be done to reduce the “staggering racial differences” in prostate cancer, one expert has said as researchers set out to discover whether a tailored genetic test could spot the disease among black men. Scientists are hoping to develop a new test using DNA information and AI technology to help improve detection of the disease among black men, who are twice as likely to get prostate cancer compared to white men.
The team, from University of East Anglia (UEA), Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust and Oxford Biodynamics, previously discovered that prostate cancer tumours leave a genetic imprint on blood cells. They hope to look for specific genetic markers in the blood of black patients and compare them to white patients and a control group without cancer.
Prof Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “In the UK there is a racial disparity in prostate cancer, where black patients are twice as likely to develop the disease and die of it than white men. Recent research shows that this staggering racial difference for prostate cancer diagnosis and mortality is due to genetic differences, but their exact nature is currently not known.
