A new study published in the journal Cancer and Metastasis Reviews has found that a person’s genetic ancestry plays an important role in how tumors develop and behave in head and neck cancer, which in turn is linked to differences in patient survival.

Such disparities are usually attributed to social factors — including access to healthcare, lifestyle differences, or the timing of diagnosis. However, the researchers showed that the biological characteristics of tumors may also depend on genetic background.

The scientists analyzed data from more than 500 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma — one of the most common forms of this cancer — using the large biological database The Cancer Genome Atlas.

They compared the molecular features of tumors in patients with different genetic ancestries and found that DNA variations associated with ancestry predicted tumor mutation patterns, the activity of specific genes, and the rate at which cancer cells grow.

The study also sheds light on a long-standing disparity: on average, people of African ancestry survive significantly less time after diagnosis than those of European ancestry — about 2.5 years compared with nearly 4.8 years. These differences are explained not only by varying exposure to risk factors (such as smoking or human papillomavirus infection), but also by biological characteristics of the tumors themselves linked to patients’ genetic backgrounds.

The authors emphasize that this is not about a simple marker of race or skin color. Rather, genetic ancestry reflects biologically encoded variations in DNA that influence the molecular mechanisms of tumor growth, metastasis, and response to treatment. These differences may determine how aggressive a tumor is and how it responds to chemotherapy or other therapies.