Racial and social contextual factors in relation to epigenome and bladder cancer outcome

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CURED PILOT Project 2 Summary This proposal entails strengthening the efforts between Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center (DLDCCC) at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Texas Southern University (TSU), an institution serving underserved health disparity populations and a historically black college and university (HBCU), to establish the Baylor-Texas Southern P20 consortium or BCM-TSU P20 Collaborative Union for Cancer Research, Education and Disparities (CURED). BCM-TSU P20 CURED will develop the infrastructure for a cancer research program with a specific focus on cancer health disparities (including biology, outcomes, and access to treatment) and community engagement with a joint Cancer Research Education Program. This collaboration builds upon complementary expertise in cancer health disparities at DLDCCC/BCM and TSU, cancer drug discovery and pharmacokinetics at TSU, and robust patient and community- focused outreach and engagement focused on predominantly minority populations of both institutions with complementary expertise and allowance of shared resources and ongoing joint endeavors with both institutions. The proposal for BCM-TSU P20 CURED includes the Center of Excellence for Housing and Community Development Policy Research (CEHCDPR), a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Center of Excellence, at TSU as a member of the research team. Faculty with CEHCDPR will partner with faculty from the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at BCM to study the associations between the social determinants of health (SDOH) and bladder cancer to understand the racial disparities in disease progression, in which African Americans experience more severe outcomes than Whites. CEHCDPR will develop a SDOH interviewer-administered survey that will include questions about socioeconomic characteristic, smoking history, and health care access, and residential and workplace history. BCM will administer the survey to consenting bladder cancer patients. Once BCM has completed the survey, CEHCDPR will use Geographic Information Systems software to geolocate each patient’s historical residential location. CEHCDPR will compile data layers from existing sources, including US Census and US EPA, on the socioeconomic and environmental conditions of the patient’s residential neighborhoods. Concurrently, BCM will run DNA testing of tissue samples from the patients who completed the survey. The CEHCDPR and BCM datasets will be combined and CEHCDPR will analyze the data to evaluate the association between the SDOH and the cancer DNA data.