The Need to Enrich Population Diversity in Radiogenomic Research

Abstract

Oncology clinical trials do not reflect the rich diversity of the US population because only 6% of the participants in these have been African American and 2.6% Hispanic, although these groups account for 11% and 9%, respectively, of new incident cancers in the United States. Similarly, genome-wide association studies of cancer susceptibility have identified >700 risk loci, of which ∼80% were discovered in European ancestry populations, ∼15% in East Asians, 3% in multiethnic scans, and <1% in African and Latin American populations. In radiogenomics, where the aim is to identify germline (as opposed to somatic) genetic markers predictive of response to radiation therapy, most studies accrued subjects primarily of European ancestry.