Billionaire Robert F. Smith Partners with Prostate Cancer Foundation to Address Racial Disparities and Reduce Deaths from Disease

Robert F. Smith, founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners and The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) have announced a new effort to reduce deaths from prostate cancer, one of the largest health disparities facing African-American men today.

Prostate cancer affects more than three million men in the U.S., with one in nine men diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime. African-American men are disproportionately impacted, 76 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than Caucasian men.

African-American men additionally are more than twice as likely to die from the disease compared to men of other ethnicities. Earlier, strategic detection is a key step in finding a cure and ending the health disparity faced by men of African descent.

The research Smith is supporting is intended for development of the Smith Polygenic Risk Test for Prostate Cancer, a non-invasive, early detection test that will identify a man’s lifetime prostate cancer risk using a combination of more than 250 genetic variants obtained from a single sample of saliva or blood.

The Smith Test is expected to cost less than $90 USD and will be made available in PCF’s dedicated Veterans Affairs (VA) network of Centers of Excellence, including the Robert Frederick Smith Center of Precision Oncology Excellence at the VA Chicago.

The test is part of a larger PCF research initiative to improve the understanding of genetic risk in African-American men and transform early detection and imaging strategies, risk management, and clinical-decision making by men at highest lifetime risk of prostate cancer.

RELATED: Billionaire Robert F. Smith Launches Student Freedom Initiative to Ease Student Debt at Historically Black Colleges

The research, led by Dr. Chris Haiman, ScD, a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Southern California, and international colleagues is aimed at accelerating the reduction of prostate cancer disparities for African American men by 2030.

“As African-American men are at an increased risk for being diagnosed or dying from prostate cancer, understanding their risk profile and applying this knowledge earlier with strategic detection, care, and decisions about cancer risk management is of utmost importance to address health inequity in the U.S.,” said Smith.

“This is why I made a personal commitment to help accelerate research, encourage African American men to participate in the study and subsequent testing, and develop new detection strategies that have the power to transform how we diagnose and treat this disease and help save lives.”

Most genomic studies of prostate cancer have focused on men of European ancestry, and there is a vital need for additional resources to develop and optimize a polygenic risk score in those disproportionately affected.

This new Smith-PCF initiative will increase the representation of African American men in the study and vastly expand the research to allow Dr. Haiman to quadruple the size of his study cohort, a key step to providing worldwide access to the Smith Polygenic Risk Test as soon as possible.

About the Prostate Cancer Foundation
The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) is the world’s leading philanthropic organization dedicated to funding life-saving cancer research. Founded in 1993 by Mike Milken, PCF has raised more than $830 million in support of cutting-edge research by more than 2,200 research projects at 220 leading cancer centers in 22 countries around the world. Thanks in part to PCF’s commitment to ending death and suffering from prostate cancer, the death rate is down by 52% and countless more men are alive today as a result. The Prostate Cancer Foundation research now impacts more than 70 forms of human cancer by focusing on immunotherapy, the microbiome, and food as medicine. Learn more at www.pcf.org.