UC Davis Cancer Center Wins Grant to Focus on Asian-Americans

The UC Davis Cancer Center has won a $5.6 million grant to establish the National Center for Reducing Asian American Cancer Health Disparities, the only such center in the United States. It is a timely creation of such a center, given that Asian-Americans are particularly vulnerable to liver cancer and Hepatitus A and B, are stereotyped as not getting certain cancers, and are often reluctant to talk about it.  Says Moon Chen, professor of hematology and oncology and the lead principal investigator for the effort:  “Asian-Americans are the only U.S. racial group that experiences cancer as the leading cause of death. Our cancer burden is unusual in that we experience disproportionately high rates of cancers due to infectious origins such as liver cancer, as well as increasing rates of colon cancer. The center will focus on reducing this unnecessary cancer burden.”