Dr. George on Results of Abi Race Trial in Prostate Cancer

Daniel J. George, MD, professor of medicine, surgery, member, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses the results of the prospective multicenter Abi Race trial, which compared outcomes of African-American and Caucasian patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) treated with abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and prednisone. George shared this insight in an interview with OncLive during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

In prostate cancer in America, African-American men are not only at higher risk for developing prostate cancer, they are also are at high risk for prostate cancer mortality, George explains. This is 2.5 times more likely than it is for Caucasian patients, and a 5 times greater likelihood than Asian-American patients. Researchers suggest there is a genetic component to this, he adds.

In the international COUGAR-AA-302 trial, African-American men were underrepresented; there were 28 African-American patients out of an overall 1100 patients, George says. However, in 15 of the 28 African-American patients who received abiraterone, there were greater and longer response rates by prostate-specific antigen (PSA) compared with the overall population.

In a retrospective, nested, case-control study, researchers from Duke Cancer Institute found this similar pattern with a higher PSA response rate and a longer time to PSA progression in the African-American versus Caucasian patients, demonstrating that African Americans may have greater and more durable responses to abiraterone/prednisone than Caucasian patients.

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