Jennifer Beebe-Dimmer, Ph.D., associate professor; scientific director of the Epidemiology Research Core; and co-leader of the Population Studies and Disparities Research Program in the Department of Oncology at Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine, has obtained a three-year, $675,726 Department of Defense grant for her project, “The Contribution of Rare Variants in Familial Clustering of Prostate and Breast Cancer in African Americans”. The proposal number is PC160367.
Her co-investigator is Greg Dyson, Ph.D., assistant professor in the departments of Oncology, Molecular Biology and Genetics at Karmanos and WSU SOM.
According to Dr. Beebe-Dimmer, there are very few factors known that increase a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer. Older age, African-American race and a positive family history of prostate cancer in close relatives are important risk factors. Family history of prostate cancer, particularly when relatives are diagnosed at a younger age, suggests that genes play an important role.
There are many genes that can cause different kinds of cancer. In many African-American families, both prostate cancer and breast cancer is diagnosed among close relatives, but the role of the two most important breast cancer susceptibility genes (namely BRCA1 and BRCA2) are not well-understood in prostate cancer, especially in African-American men.