Key Takeaways
Targeted cancer drugs are benefitting White patients more often than Black or Asian patientsThe likelihood of a person’s genetics matching a targeted therapy is higher for White patientsClinical trials frequently include mostly White patients, which makes approved drugs less helpful for racial and ethnic minorities
THURSDAY, Jan. 16, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Cutting-edge targeted therapies are pushing back the line between life and death for cancer patients.
However, these targeted cancer drugs frequently aren’t benefitting members of ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S., a new published in the journal JAMA Oncology says.
Nearly half of all new cancer drugs approved during the past quarter-century target genetic mutations that drive tumor growth.
But these drugs were approved based on clinical trials with mostly white patients, researchers note.
Because of this, patients of European ancestry are more likely to benefit from these treatments than those from other racial backgrounds.
“Our findings are very concerning,” lead researcher Kanika Arora, a computational biologist with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said in a news release.
“In the early years of precision oncology therapy, there were no significant differences among the ancestry groups,” Arora continued. “But as more drugs have received approval, the differences have grown wider.”
What’s more, pooled genetic data that’s used to predict how well a tumor will respond to a particular drug also skews toward white patients, researchers noted.
“Over 80% of the samples included in these pooled datasets are from self-reported white patients, predominantly of European ancestry, because these are the patients who historically have been most likely, and often most able, to participate in clinical trials,” senior researcher Debyani Chakravarty, a molecular geneticist with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said in a news release.
“This means that biomarker discovery and subsequent efforts to develop molecularly matched drugs are based on data from patients who are overwhelmingly of European ancestry,” Chakravarty added.
For the study, researchers analyzed data nearly 59,500 cancer patients who underwent genetic analysis at Memorial Sloan Kettering. The analysis looked for cancer-causing mutations in 505 genes that have been associated with cancer.
Researchers found significant differences between people of different backgrounds when it came to their eligibility for treatment with targeted cancer drugs.
Black cancer patients in particular have been left behind by these medical advances, researchers found. They were least likely to have cancers eligible to be treated by precision drugs.
Between 2012 and 2023, the likelihood of getting matched with an FDA-approved drug increased about:
9.1-fold for patients of European ancestry.8.5-fold for patients of East Asian ancestry.6.8-fold for patients of South Asian ancestry.6-fold for patients of African ancestry.
“Beginning in 2019, significantly fewer patients of inferred African ancestry were found to be eligible for treatment with FDA-approved precision oncology drugs compared with individuals with other inferred genetic ancestries,” researchers concluded.
The researchers suggested that future clinical trials enroll more diverse patient populations, to make sure new drug breakthroughs benefit everyone.
“Our research has found that especially in the past five years, when the largest number of precision oncology therapies have been approved, patients of African ancestry have been significantly less likely to benefit from these drugs compared with patients of European ancestry,” Arora said.
More information
The National Cancer Institute has more on targeted therapy to treat cancer.
SOURCE: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, news release, Jan. 9, 2025
What This Means For You
Cancer patients should ask their doctor about their eligibility for different targeted therapies.
