PHILADELPHIA — The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a $12 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund a new Center of Excellence in Prostate Cancer Disparities.
The gap in prostate cancer mortality rates among black and white men -- 62 per 100,000 in African American men and 26 per 100,000 men of European ancestry – is wider than that observed in any other major cancer. By combining transdisciplinary, translational research about the effects of biological, behavioral, social, environmental, and health care factors on prostate cancer outcomes, the new center’s investigators aim to develop and disseminate interventions that can be used to shrink those striking disparities.
The project will have three prongs. First, the Penn Medicine team will investigate the role of obesity in prostate cancer development and progression of the disease. Though obesity is a potentially modifiable risk factor, it’s not yet clear how racial composition of a neighborhood, socioeconomic status, living conditions and stress levels relate to obesity’s role in disease outcomes. They will also focus on biomarkers and neighborhood data to develop a model to help predict prostate cancer outcomes, and investigate differences in treatment experienced by black and white men as impacted by various barriers to care in an urban environment.
“Prostate cancer is a serious public health issue, particularly for African American men” says the project’s principal investigator, Timothy Rebbeck, PhD, a professor of Epidemiology who directs the Center for Genetics and Complex Traits in the Perelman School of Medicine and serves as associate director for Population Science in the Abramson Cancer Center. “Our new center will address the causes of this health disparity. We will be able to use the information from this project to improve the outcomes of African American men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.”
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
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