Differences Exist in Precision Oncology Drug Eligibility Among Patient Ancestral Groups

TUESDAY, Jan. 14, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Ancestry-based differences in frequencies of biomarkers that drive patient selection for treatment with precision oncology drugs currently exist, according to a study published online Jan. 9 in JAMA Oncology.

Kanika Arora, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and colleagues examined whether patients with cancer from different ancestral backgrounds benefited equally from U.S. Food and Drug Administration precision oncology drug approvals from January 1998 to December 2023. The analysis included a retrospective analysis of samples from 59,433 patients with solid cancers who underwent clinical sequencing using the integrated mutation profiling of actionable cancer targets (MSK-IMPACT) assay between January 2014 and December 2022. 

The researchers found that the approval of the EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitor erlotinib for patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancers in 2013 disproportionately benefited patients of East Asian and South Asian ancestries, leading to higher patient fractions with level 1 biomarkers in these ancestral groups versus other populations. Patients of African ancestry had the lowest fraction of level 1 biomarkers compared with other groups from 2019 onward, while the increase in precision oncology drug approvals from 2019 to 2020 had a notable positive impact on clinical actionability for patients of European ancestry.

“These differences may exacerbate the systemic disparities in clinical outcomes in patients of African ancestry due to existing deficiencies in their access to cancer care,” the authors write.

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

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