10/6/2008
 
Research Cores
 
Respiratory Effects
Cancer
Study Design
and Statistical Methodology
Exposure Assessment
Core Director:
Anna Wu
Co-Directors:
Thomas Mack
Robert Haile
 
Core Members
Publication List
Goals & Objectives
Research Highlights
 
 
Cancer Research Core
Overview

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.
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 primarily from infectious agents, air pollutants, and endogenous hormones to include occupational exposures, a narrow spectrum of environmental chemical exposure, a wide range of iatrogenic exposures, and broad aspects of lifestyle, including diet. Other resources were established, including cohorts locally and in East Asia, and registries of affected and healthy twins. As measures of the national status of the membership of the Cancer Research Core, two members of the program are fellows of the Institute of Medicine, two others have been awarded outstanding investigator awards, and five program members have received endowed chairs from the University.

Thus, the Cancer Research Core has an extensive history in studying the environmental causes of cancer and, with the advent of new laboratory technology to explore genetic and epigenetic 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 that 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.
Other strengths of the Core are the breadth (some environmental aspects of nearly every major cancer site is currently or has been investigated in the past by this Core) and depth of the research program (there is a strong emphasis on pathogenic pathways and biological mechanisms); strong, highly interactive biostatistical support; a highly integrated interdisciplinary research program involving molecular biologists, biochemists and other laboratory-based scientists; a synergy with the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center; and a rich history of mentoring young prevention scientists and epidemiologists for careers in cancer epidemiology.