CANCER EPIDEMIOLOGY RESEARCH

The long-term goals of the Cancer Epidemiology (CE) Program are to investigate environmental, lifestyle and genetic factors that lead to increased incidence, morbidity and mortality from cancer and to integrate biomarkers into these studies. To achieve this end, the following Specific Goals will be pursued: 1. Carry out molecular epidemiology studies that broadly include the integration of data collected from biospecimens with epidemiologic data to understand cancer risk. These studies will take advantage of almost 20 cohorts actively being studied, many with biospecimens, and the long history of research in the CE Program using biomarkers. 2. Investigate how exposures in key susceptible time periods alter cancer susceptibility. Lifecourse epidemiology and timing of events will be used to capture risk factor data from pre and postnatal periods. 3. Conduct epidemiologic studies around the globe. Longitudinal research is being carried out in Latin America, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East. The CE Program consists of 15 members (all full members) from 3 departments within the School of Public Health and 2 departments within the College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University. The Program is supported by several large Federally-funded collaborative grants including the Breast Cancer Family Registry, the NIEHS Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan and a Superfund Basic Research Program. For the last budget year of the grant (July 1, 2006 - June 30, 2007), the CE Program successfully obtained a total of $6.8M (direct costs) in cancer-relevant grant support, including $2.3M (direct costs) in NCI funding, $4.1 M (direct costs) in other cancer-related peer-reviewed funding, and $0.4M (direct costs) in cancer-related non-peer-reviewed funding. The total number of publications since the previous submission (i.e., 2003-present) was 181 of which 42% were intra-programmatic and 36% inter-programmatic.