George Edgecomb Society Grants Announced for 2024

The George Edgecomb Society has awarded two new grants of $75,000 each to Moffitt Cancer Center teams conducting research into cancer disparities. The research focuses on health disparities within the Black community, especially in Moffitt’s 23-county service area, also called a catchment area.

Because of the high standards for Moffitt’s academic research, these proposals from Moffitt scientists were rigorously reviewed by panels of scientists before they received funding.

This year’s grants also were evaluated by community reviewers with deep knowledge of Moffitt’s 23-county region. These reviewers, called “community scientists” include three active members of Moffitt’s Patient and Family Advisory Program. This new process is designed to ensure that the George Edgecomb Society research not only has scientific merit, but also that it serves the needs of the community.

“Our community reviewers use their deep knowledge of local communities to ensure that George Edgecomb Society research makes a positive impact for health equity in Moffitt’s 23-county catchment area,” said Jennifer Vidrine, PhD, assistant center director for Research Community Partnerships and senior member, Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior.  

Evaluating the Role of Structural Racism on Cancer Outcomes among People Living with HIV and Cancer

In the US, cancer is now a leading cause of death among people with HIV (PWH). In fact, PWH are more likely to die due to cancer compared to patients without HIV. Although it is well known that HIV disproportionately impacts socioeconomically disadvantaged communities of color, little is known regarding the social factors that lead to outcome inequities by race and HIV status among cancer patients. Using an existing database of PWH with cancer treated at Moffitt, we aim to address this gap in knowledge and estimate impacts of structural racism using patient’s zip code-level measures that capture aggregate geographic effects of historical policies, such as redlining, that continue to impact allocation of resources, funding and access to care today. We will also quantify a biologic measure of the impacts of long-term “weathering” due to chronic stress or discrimination experienced due to racism known as allostatic load. We will evaluate neighborhood-level structural racism and allostatic load by race/ethnicity among PWH with cancer to facilitate the development of future larger grants aimed at generating new knowledge about the biological basis of effects of structural racism on cancer outcomes among PWH to improve cancer health equity.

Imaging and Protein Biomarkers in African American Men with Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer disproportionately affects minorities of African descent who are twice as likely to succumb to the disease compared to Non-Hispanic White (NHW) Caucasians. Identifying these aggressive phenotypes that have immune dysregulation in African American men is a key to early diagnosis and treatment strategies; however, the widely used PSA test that is known to have lower sensitivity and specificity of significant cancer detection has contributed to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of this disease.

The immune microenvironment and associated biological mechanisms that controls the progression of prostate cancer in advanced disease stages are poorly understood. We propose to use a panel of targeted immune descriptors along with mpMR imaging features (as surrogates) to identify molecular immune drivers in African American men in comparison with Non-Hispanic White (NHW) Caucasians. We propose a multi-prong approach to use advanced imaging coupled with cell surface markers using multiplex immunofluorescence to identify immune pathways associated with aggressive disease phenotypes. Combining the multiscale profile will allow us to develop predictors that relate to the genotypes of the tumor and specifically assess immune dysregulation in African American men that would allow early detection and treatment interventions, impacting disparities.