Comprehensive Population-Specific Marker Panel for Early Prostate Cancer Diagnostics and Risk Assessment

Abstract

Abstract : The overall scope of the proposed postdoctoral training project is to provide protected time for the primary investigator (PI) to obtain a comprehensive training in the field of prostate cancer health disparity. Within the scope of this grant, a comprehensive training consists of the two main parts; a training part and a research part. For the training part, PI attended relevant seminars, conferences, classes, and wrote manuscripts and grants. For the research part, we hypothesized that a combination panel (DETECT) of genetic biomechanical, socio-cultural and lifestyle population specific biomarkers and factors will provided a valuable PCa screening and risk assessment tool. The PI genotyped 528 DNA samples obtained from African American and European American men with prostate cancer controls. It was found that two SNPs were statistically significantly associated with prostate cancer risk associated with one of the SNPs in African American men was found in obese men only; if was not seen in either non-obese African American men or European American men regardless of their body mass. The PI has proposed a concept of the increased risk in obese AAM for which the NIH R21 was submitted on 11/2012. The grant was scored in the 30th percentile and will be resubmitted on 07/2013. In addition, the PI has genotyped the samples for the androgen receptor gene CAG repeat length, and found the connection with obesity of African American men. Investigations of these topics are on going.