Colorectal, prostate, lung, liver and breast cancer are universally known disparity associated cancers.!Across these cancers the incidence and mortality rates have been consistently increasing solely in Black patients. Despite the overarching limitation!of representation of Black data worldwide, and only 2% of the genetic information available to study health and disease originating from people of!African ancestry, there is no concrete cause to the racial disparities in cancer. Sociodemographic, socioeconomic, screening, education, nutrition,!delivery of healthcare, stress and culture are common factors that are suspected to influence the disparities; thus, this study will uncover novel features/biomarkers that are influencing the racial disparities in cancer and novel genetic differences between Black and White patients.We propose a 3-year proof of concept retrospective study to assess racial disparities in cancer. This study will focus on the aforementioned disparity associated cancers. Part of the study will be based on results from an in-house dataset from Accenture BioInnovation labs. The UK Biobank will then be used to validate these findings. The UKBB contains in-depth genetic and health information on >500,000 UK adults recruited between 2006-2012. The study population includes around 8,066 Black ethnicity participants. The study includes two methods: METHOD ONE: INVESTIGATING THE PREVALENCE OF RISK COMORBIDITIES RELATED TO DIAGNOSIS IN TWO POPULATIONS: Accenture owns a closed-source in-house dataset of 54M patients. The in-house data will be used first to generate and confirm the hypotheses and the UK Biobank data will then be used to validate the findings. Using the in-house dataset, we will focus on the following cancer types, breast (37,566 Black patients), colorectal (16,431 Black patients), Prostate (36,231 Black patients), Lung (9,729 Black patients), and Liver (17,548 Black patients). We then plan to use the UK Biobank whole exome sequencing data to: A) validate comorbidities and determine relevant genetic evidence to the in-house findings, by discovering associations between genes, proteins, variants and pathways causing the racial disparities in cancer, B) discover potential biomarkers (e.g., lab observation values, cholesterol, glucose etc.)
1. Related to risk comorbidities (identified in previous analysis)
2. Compare biomarkers between two populations (Black and White) – statistical analysis
METHOD TWO: DETERMINE THE ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS IMPACTING BLACK PATIENTS’ RISK OF DEVELOPING CANCER: Similar methods to the above, however a list of environmental impacts will be analysed such as diet, educational and insurance status, screening behaviour, treatment patterns, housing and access to and use of health care facilities.
