CONTEXT: We’ve covered reports around this theme before, so good to see further research supporting why it is important to have representative ethnic diversity in all studies on new therapies, but specifically in oncology. New data from the FLEX registry (which aims to enrol 30,000 breast cancer patients from a wide range of age, ethnicity and demographic groups representative of all breast cancer cases) shows differences in tumour biology that can lead to meaningful treatment decisions fro individual patients.
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1. “These data tell us that we desperately need proper representation of diverse populations in clinical trials, and future studies focused on the efficacy of these agents specifically in African American women with breast cancer, so that all patients can benefit from precision medicine, tailored to them, and accounting for their ancestry and genomic profiles.””
2. “, a world leader in precision oncology for breast cancer, announced today that an oral presentation at the 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting revealed new data from the national FLEX registry that identify differences in tumor biology between ethnic groups that can lead to meaningful treatment decisions, reinforcing the need for appropriate representation of diverse patient populations in breast cancer studies.”
3. “The data presentation from this study, “Disparities within Luminal breast cancer: clinical and molecular features of African American and non-Hispanic White patients,” delivered by first author of the study Kent Hoskins, MD, Co-Leader of the Breast Cancer Research Group and Director of Cancer Genetics at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, details significant biological differences in luminal breast tumors from African American and non-Hispanic White women, suggesting that shared adverse socioeconomic exposures and/or genetic ancestry may be driving disproportionately aggressive tumor biology in African American women.”
4. “Additional data from Agendia regarding breast cancer in African American women was shared in an abstract titled “Genomic risk classification by the 70-gene signature and 21-gene assay in African American, early-stage breast cancer patients.””
5. “In addition, recent data indicate that African American patients who receive a low or intermediate OncotypeDX risk score have higher recurrence rates and lower survival than Caucasian patients with early stage breast cancer with the same risk score, a difference that can have meaningful clinical implications and requires further investigation.1. “It is essential that genomic tests either work consistently across diverse groups of patients, or have the ability to be calibrated to do so,” said Patricia Robinson, MD, Associate Professor of Hematology and Oncology at Loyola University Medical Center, and Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Strich School of Medicine, “We cannot be using genomic tests that work for some people and not others, or accepting that the tests, which offer such crucial information, work better for some than for others.”