Abstract A022: Comparing prostate specific antigen dynamics between Black patients and White patients

Background: Black men are the most have the highest prostate cancer (PCa) mortality across all US population groups. We have previously demonstrated how mathematical modeling can be used to understand prostate-specific antigen (PSA) dynamics and predict patient-specific responses to treatment. We hypothesize that we can use mathematical modeling to investigate differences in PSA dynamics between black and white men undergoing androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) treatment modalities for both black and white patients that will ultimately reduce disparities. Methods: We received data for 57 PCa patients from the Veterans Affairs Hospital and Medical College of Wisconsin (N = 47 white, N = 10 black). To compensate for the lack of data for black patients, propensity score matching was used to match 15 white patients to 10 black patients based on their Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) score, age, and tumor burden. Our previously developed stem cell enrichment model was used to investigate the primary differences in response dynamics between the white and black patient cohorts. ^[1]Results: Parameter optimization was used to determine appropriate model parameter values to accurately describe the data. Parameters were sequentially chosen to be patient-specific or uniform within each individual patient cohort in a leave-one-out analysis. Parameter analysis showed that the stem cell self-renewal rates significantly differed between white and black patients (p = 0.0455). Further analysis did not show any significant differences between patient cohorts for the remaining model parameters. Conclusions: Our results suggest that stem cell self-renewal is the parameter driving differences in PSA dynamics between white and black patients. Though propensity score analysis allowed for a more equal comparison between the black and white patient cohorts, additional patient data is needed to validate these results. Future work will include acquiring additional data and completing race-specific model analysis for black and white patients.

Citation Format: Alexandria Johnson. Comparing prostate specific antigen dynamics between Black patients and White patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 15th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2022 Sep 16-19; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2022;31(1 Suppl):Abstract nr A022.