Cancer researchers call for ethnicity to be taken into account

Imperial College London

- Breast cancer research needs to investigate how a person’s ethnicity influences their response to treatment and its outcome, according to a new Comment piece in 18 July’s Lancet by researchers from Imperial College London.

Emerging evidence suggests that particular drugs may benefit people from one ethnic group more than others, because of differences in their genetic makeup. However, most key trials looking at treatments for breast cancer have been carried out in predominantly white populations in Europe, North America and Australasia.

Other populations might not respond to a drug in the same way as the white populations in these trials, argue the researchers writing today. They suggest that clinical trials should record participants’ ethnicity and analyse whether there are differences in how patients from particular ethnic groups respond to a particular therapy.

Click here for more…