Pancreatic cancer shows distinct biological differences across racial groups

New research from the University of Cincinnati Cancer Center found biological differences in pancreatic cancer tumors and immune environments, opening the possibility for more personalized treatments for different populations.

Led by Nina Steele, PhD, assistant professor in UC's College of Medicine, in collaboration with Howard Crawford, PhD, scientific director of the Henry Ford + Michigan State University Pancreatic Cancer Center, the research was recently published in the journal Cancer Research.

Incidence and survival rates of pancreatic cancer vary between different populations of Americans, but sufficient data did not previously exist to determine specific genomic differences between populations.

"We didn't have an accurate reflection of all of the patients impacted by the disease reflected in the data," said Steele, who is also a Cancer Center member. "There had never been a large-scale multiomic effort looking at tens of thousands of biological markers across a diverse cohort of pancreatic cancer patients."

Steele and her colleagues at Henry Ford Health (where she started the project) and UC mapped out the genomic information of a representative sample of the American population diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is 20% more likely to develop in Black African Americans (BAA), and the team found the cancer cells of BAA and Non-African Americans (NAA) had different molecular signatures.

The cancer cells make unique RNAs and proteins, so that could be relevant to how individual patients from different groups could respond to targeted therapies like RAS inhibitors. The markers upregulated in Black patients likely represent a type of cells typically associated with drug resistance, so this biological difference could play a role in outcomes."

Nina Steele, PhD, assistant professor, UC's College of Medicine

Additionally, a type of immune cell called B cells within pancreatic tumor microenvironments are different between BAA and NAA populations, with the B cells within BAA samples found to be more abundant but also more immunosuppressive (dampening the body's natural immune response to fight the cancer).

"This may mean the B cells are helping the cancer cells hide in this patient population," Steele said. "This could help explain why this population is more likely to get the cancer, and why it's worse when they get it, but more work is needed on pancreas tissues from individuals that do not have cancer."

Steele said the study provides a framework for further research into the mechanisms behind these biological differences across populations and how the differences affect outcomes.

The research is part of a larger trend of personalized medicine, with more detailed data leading to specific treatments to meet the individual needs of patients. Further research could even potentially lead to the classification of entirely new subtypes of pancreatic cancer, similar to what has occurred in breast and prostate cancer.

"The Cancer Center is here to serve everybody, and to find the answers that help all patients," Steele said. "The hope is to know more about the characteristics of the cancer cells earlier on, so that we have a plan of attack for what therapies come after current standards of care in a very rational way. We're headed toward forecasting, the ability to better predict what will happen to every patient in their journey before it happens."