Cancer Projects to Diversify Genetic Research Receive New Grants

The New York Genome Center awarded six cancer research grants this week as part of an initiative examining the role of race and ethnicity in major types of cancer.

The projects will investigate a variety of cancers including pancreatic, colorectal and endometrial cancer in African-Americans; lung cancer in Asian-American patients; breast and prostate cancer in patients of African ancestry; and the role of ethnicity in bladder cancer.

The Genome Center’s two-year-old initiative, called Polyethnic-1000, is aimed at closing the knowledge gap that exists largely because decades of genetic studies focused mainly on white patient populations. Dr. Harold Varmus, a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell overseeing the initiative, said he hoped the projects would advance the understanding of racial disparities in the prevalence of different cancer types, as well as patient responses to different cancer therapies.

“The disparities are there but the explanations are not,” said Dr. Varmus, who previously served as head of the National Institutes of Health and of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Expanding genetic research to become more representative of the broader American population will also further researchers’ understanding of cancer. “Leaving people out is an equity issue and a knowledge issue,” he added.