According to several studies and statistics, Black men often succumb to prostate cancer; however, ironically, the benefits of immunotherapy they receive affect them more than it affects White men, increasing their survival. A new study from Northwestern University has discovered that the reason behind this lies in the increase of a surprising type of immune cell in their cancerous tumors.
This is a remarkable finding as it could lead to the development of precise immunotherapy treatments for men of all races suffering from aggressive and advanced prostate cancer. In the new study, researchers showed that tumors in Black men and African American men contained an increased proportion of a specific immune cell known as plasma cells compared to tumors in White men. The researchers, led by Dr. Edward Schaeffer, head of the urology department at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, found that this increase in plasma cells was linked to improved survival chances for cancer patients after surgery, identifying plasma cells as potential drivers of the immune response to prostate cancer. Dr. Schaeffer stated, "If cancerous prostate tumors have many plasma cells, it signifies an improvement in survival odds. Our study suggests that these plasma cells are important in the human immune response to cancer."
Although recent research indicates that Black men with advanced prostate cancer have improved survival outcomes following the use of immunotherapy, there has been no way to predict which individual patients—whether Black or White—would respond better to immunotherapeutic drugs than others. Dr. Schaeffer's team explored this by analyzing the genomes of 1,300 samples from tumors of different races, classified as genetically distinct or normal. They found that plasma cell counts in tumors of Black men were higher than in tumors of White men on average. Notably, this discovery was not unique to Black men; the study showed that among all men with high levels of plasma cells in their tumors, there was an improvement in cancer survival post-surgery. The study's lead author, Dr. Adam Weiner, a urologist at Northwestern University, said, "These results come at a time when researchers are discovering that plasma cells may play a larger role in cancer immunotherapy than previously thought, and testing for plasma cells in prostate cancer could help identify the men who will benefit more from immunotherapy treatments than others."
It is worth noting that prostate cancer is considered the second most common type of cancer among American men, with nearly 175,000 new cases diagnosed annually and about 32,000 deaths. Moreover, the severity of prostate cancer symptoms and mortality among patients of African American descent has been approximately doubled.
