Dr. Woloszynska on the Need to Assess Biological Factors of Racial Disparities in Prostate Cancer

Anna Woloszynska, PhD, associate professor of oncology, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, graduate faculty member, State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, discusses the need to assess biological factors of racial disparities in prostate cancer.

Racial disparities in prostate cancer have become a topic of interest because they represent a serious public health issue, Woloszynska says. Moreover, it is important to look at this issue in detail from a biological perspective, which hasn’t been sufficiently done to date, Woloszynska adds.

As research on these topics progresses, it is important to look at racial health disparities in African American men with prostate cancer to identify what the biological determinants of the disease, Woloszynska continues. Future research efforts examine why African American men tend to develop prostate cancer earlier in their lifetime compared with European American men, as well as why African American men often present with more aggressive disease at the time of diagnosis, Woloszynska concludes.