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Adult
Cancer Research Core |
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| Overview |
The specific airms of the Adult Cancer Research
Core are:
- To identify new or provide more detailed
evaluation of known environmental causes
of adult cancer.
- To identify or develop improved methods
of exposure assessment for environmental
carcinogens.
- To develop methods to identify individual
or population susceptibility to environmental
carcinogens, focusing on regulatory mechanisms
for metabolism of carcinogens or repair
mechanisms for carcinogen induced DNA
damage between individuals or populations.
- To identify environmental exposures
which alter penetrance of “cancer
susceptibility” genes and to quantify
these gene-environment interactions.
- To provide an infrastructure to promote
communication between laboratory scientists
and epidemiologists for the purpose of
developing interdisciplinary research
on gene-environment interactions in cancer
etiology.
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| Background |
Research on the environmental
etiology of cancer by epidemiologic means
at USC began in 1970 as part of an NCI program
in viral oncology. Early in the development
of the program the Cancer Surveillance Program,
the population-based cancer registry of
Los Angeles County was begun, and the senior
members of the program were recruited. As
the program expanded the environmental exposures
of interest were broadened from infectious
agents, air pollutants, and endogenous hormones
to include occupational exposures, iatrogenic
exposures, and aspects of lifestyle, including
diet. Other resources were established,
including cohorts locally and in East Asia,
and registries of affected and healthy twins. |
The Adult Cancer Research
Core has an extensive history in studying
the environmental causes of adult cancer
and, with the advent of new laboratory technology
to explore genetic causes of cancer in large
scale studies, has moved rapidly toward
the exploration of genetic modification
of environmental risk factors. The Core's
strengths have been built in part around
the development of large multipurpose databases.
Among those most extensively utilized currently
are: |
- The Cancer Surveillance Program, the
population-based SEER cancer registry
of Los Angeles County which we developed
and operate.
- The California Teachers study, a prospective
study of 133,000 female California teachers.
- The Hawaii-Los Angeles Multiethnic Cohort
study, a prospective study of 212,000
men and women from four racial-ethnic
groups in Hawaii and Los Angeles.
- The International and California Twin
Registries, the former including 12,000
pairs of twins at least one of whom has
cancer and the latter including over 40,000
healthy twins being followed for cancer
development.
- The Shanghai Cohort study, a prospective
biomarker-based study of 18,000 middle-aged
men in Shanghai.
- The Family Colon Cancer Registry, a
multi-institutional study headquartered
here of 4,000 multiplex colon cancer families.
- The Singapore Cohort study, a prospective
study of 60,000 male and female Chinese
adults in Singapore.
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