Lipid Alterations in African American Prostate Cancer

African-American (AA) men are more than twice as likely to die of prostate cancer (PCa) than European American (EA) men. Previous in-silico analysis revealed enrichment of altered lipid metabolic pathways in pan-cancer AA tumors. Here, we performed global unbiased lipidomics profiling on 48 matched localized PCa and benign adjacent tissues (30 AA, 24 ancestry-verified, and 18 EA, 8 ancestry verified) and quantified 429 lipids belonging to 15 lipid classes. Significant alterations in long chain polyunsaturated lipids was observed between PCa and benign adjacent tissues, low and high Gleason tumors, as well as associated with early biochemical recurrence, both in the entire cohort, and within AA patients. Altered levels of cholesteryl esters, and phosphatidyl inositols delineated AA and EA PCa, while levels of triglycerides, phosphatidyl glycerol, phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidic acid and cholesteryl esters distinguished AA and EA PCa patients with biochemical recurrence. These first-in-field results implicate lipid alterations as biological factors for prostate cancer disparities.