Recruitment of minorities to breast cancer clinical trials has been historically poor. This is due to a variety of circumstances from racial barriers that lead to distrust of the research enterprise, to problems of health care access. Much of the distrust of biomedical research among African-Americans has been rooted in the historical abuses of misguided programs such the Tuskegee Project that consistently raise concerns of institutional neglect and racism. No other type of clinical investigation is more suspect than genetic research which, in the past, has been used to define racial inferiority. In the national cooperative group, CALGB, we have been developing bridges to minority populations through our Minority Consortium, as well as advancing investigations into the genetics of cancer through our Correlative Sciences Committees. In this proposal, we wish to pilot an innovative project that links studies into the genetics of cancer susceptibility, with the establishment of a unique lymphocyte/DNA repository of African American women with breast cancer, and with test interventions that may increase the participation of African Americans into breast cancer clinical trials. The unique features of this proposal are that: the study is led and conducted by African American health care providers and breast cancer advocates; the proposed genetic studies require the racial admixture present in American blacks for the linkage analysis to be successful and therefore are centered on African Americans; and recruitment to the lymphocyte and DNA bank is conducted with the participation of African American breast cancer advocates using the most racially sensitive approaches possible. Successful completion of this pilot project will provide a framework with which future genetic studies in African American populations should be conducted. Our proposal addresses four of the six priority areas described in the RFA: formation of a National Biological Resource Bank, increase of Clinical Trials Accessibility, enhancement of Consumer Involvement, and investigation of new Breast Cancer Susceptibility loci.
