The primary goals and objectives of the Cancer Research Core include:

• Identifying new or providing more detailed evaluation of known environmental causes of cancer.
• Identifying new or providing more detailed evaluation of known environmental factors which enhance or reduce the rate of adult cancer progression.
• Developing or evaluating improved methods of exposure assessment for environmental carcinogens.
• Developing 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.
• Identifying environmental exposures that alter penetrance of “cancer susceptibility” genes and quantifying these gene-environment interactions.
• Providing an infrastructure to promote communication between laboratory scientists and epidemiologists for the purpose of developing interdisciplinary research on environmental causes of cancer.
• Participating in community education and outreach regarding the environmental causes and strategies for preventing cancer.