MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Harry H. Yoon, MD Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN 55905 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Yoon: In the U.S., the survival of patients with colon cancer is known to differ by race, with individuals of black race having worse outcomes than those of white race. However, it has been difficult to tease apart why the differences in survival exist. It is generally believed that social or other non-biologic factors (eg, decreased access to care, suboptimal treatment) contribute to the discrepancy.  It’s also known that differences in the general medical condition of patients could affect how long a patient lives. However, it is unknown whether there are race-based differences in the biology of colon tumors themselves.  This biology can be reflected in the genetic composition of tumors, as well as by whether and how quickly the cancer returns after the patient has undergone surgery and chemotherapy. In addition, it is unknown whether race-based differences in biology may be related to the age of the patient at the time of diagnosis.  Blacks with colorectal cancer typically have an earlier age of onset than whites do. A major barrier to addressing these questions are that there are very few large populations of colon cancer patients where everyone had the same disease stage and received uniform treatment, and where patients were monitored for years afterward specifically to see whether the cancer returned.  It is much harder to measure whether cancer has returned (ie, cancer recurrence), as compared to simply knowing whether a patient is alive or dead.  This difference is important, because knowing about cancer recurrence sheds more light on cancer biology than only knowing about patient survival, since many factors unrelated to cancer biology (eg., heart disease) can affect whether a person is alive or dead. The most reliable data on cancer recurrence (not just patient survival) generally comes from patients who have enrolled in a clinical trial.  In the Alliance N0147 trial, all patients had the same cancer stage (ie, stage III), underwent surgery and received standard of care chemotherapy (ie, “FOLFOX”) after surgery.  Patients had uniform, periodic monitoring after chemotherapy to see if the cancer returned. In other words, examining racial outcomes in this cohort largely eliminates some of the key factors (eg, decreased access to care, suboptimal treatment) that are believed to contribute to racial discrepancies, and provides a unique opportunity to determine if differences in cancer biology between races may exist. This study was done to see if colon cancers are genetically different based on race, and whether race-based differences exist in cancer recurrence rates. The study found that tumors from whites, blacks, and Asians were different in terms of the frequency of mutations in two key cancer-related genes, BRAF and KRAS.  Tumors from whites were twice as likely to have mutated BRAF (14% in whites compared to 6% in Asians and 6% in blacks).  Tumors from blacks had the highest frequency of KRAS mutations (44% in blacks compared to 28% in Asians and 35% in whites).  Tumors from Asians were the mostly likely to have normal copies of both genes (67% in Asians compared to 50% in blacks and 51% in whites). Next, the study found that the colon cancers among blacks had more than double the risk of cancer recurrence, compared to whites.  However, this discrepancy was only evident among young patients (ie, aged less than 50 years).  Almost 50% of younger black patients experienced colon cancer recurrence within 5 years, compared to ~30% of black patients over age 50, or compared to white or Asian patients regardless of age. The worse outcome among young blacks remained evident even after adjusting for many potential confounding factors, such as tumor grade, the number of malignant nodes, or the presence of BRAF or KRASmutations.  Because this question was examined in a clinical trial cohort of uniform stage and treatment, the role of multiple important potential confounders was diminished. To our knowledge, this is the first report indicating that colon cancers from young black individuals have a higher chance of relapsing after surgery and chemotherapy, compared to those from white individuals. (more…)