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- Fall 2008 Intramural Research Award Winners
- President's Cancer Panel Tackles Environmental Factors
- Study to Understand Cervical Cancer
- Bench-to-Bedside Award Targets Li-Fraumeni Syndrome
- Science Writers' Seminar on Genome-Wide Association Studies
- DCEG Assembles Two New Review Committees
- First Annual Fellows' Training Symposium
- DCEG Participates in the 100th Annual AACR Meeting
- Gloria Gridley Retires
- Transitions in the PLCO Study
- Pediatric Radiation Risks
- Workshop on Merkel Cell Carcinoma
- Richard Hayes Retires
- DCEG Holds Retreat for Tenure-Track Investigators
- New Representatives for Staff Scientist/Staff Clinician Organization
- Scientific Highlights
- DCEG People in the News
- Comings . . . Goings
- Director Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
President’s Cancer Panel Tackles Environmental Factors
During the past year, the President’s Cancer Panel held a series of meetings to carefully review the scientific evidence, advances, and barriers to progress pertaining to environmental factors in cancer. In doing so, the panel called on the expertise of a number of DCEG investigators.
As Dr. Abby B. Sandler, Chief of the NCI Institute Review Office and Executive Secretary of the President’s Cancer Panel, explained, “Each year, the panel looks at a different aspect of cancer, reviews the scientific evidence, and reports back to the President.” When the panel decided to look at environmental factors, “We naturally turned to the world’s experts on these topics here in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.”
“A number of people in the Division were hugely helpful in organizing this series,” Dr. Sandler noted. These included DCEG Deputy Director Shelia Hoar Zahm, Sc.D.; Aaron E. Blair, Ph.D., M.P.H., Scientist Emeritus in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB); and Martha S. Linet, M.D., M.P.H., Chief of the Radiation Epidemiology Branch.
The Environmental Factors in Cancer series included four public meetings, with DCEG investigators presenting at three of the sessions. In October, Michael C.R. Alavanja, Dr.P.H. (OEEB), spoke on cancer in agricultural populations and the growing evidence linking specific agricultural exposures to specific cancers. He was joined by Laura Beane-Freeman, Ph.D. (OEEB), who spoke on the Agricultural Health Study and the Agricultural Cohort Consortium, and Mary H. Ward, Ph.D. (OEEB), who spoke on human exposure to nitrogen fertilizers, primarily through drinking contaminated water, and discussed evidence linking such exposure to cancer.
Speakers: Jay Lubin, Mary Ward, Kenneth Cantor, Martha Linet, Laura Beane-Freeman, and Michael Alavanja.
Jay H. Lubin, Ph.D., Biostatistics Branch, and Kenneth P. Cantor, Ph.D., M.P.H. (OEEB), participated in a December meeting devoted to the effects of air pollution and water contamination. Dr. Lubin presented wide-ranging evidence that radon exposure is a human lung carcinogen, including findings from cohort studies of radon-exposed underground miners and case-control studies of residential radon. Dr. Cantor gave an overview of the epidemiologic evidence for the effects of carcinogens in drinking water, particularly inorganic arsenic and byproducts of chlorine used to disinfect water, but also including nitrates, radionuclides, and various organic and inorganic chemicals.
Dr. Linet participated in the fourth and final meeting in January on radiation exposures. Her presentation, “Cellular telephone use and cancer risk,” related brain cancer incidence to trends in cell phone use by looking at biological effects of radiofrequency radiation, early epidemiological studies, more recent investigations and pooled analyses of several central nervous system tumors, and data from occupational studies. Dr. Linet summarized the strengths and limitations of epidemiological investigations to date and identified gaps in knowledge.
The President’s Cancer Panel formally dates from 1971, when it was created by Section 407 of P.L. 92-218, the “War on Cancer” Act, to monitor the development and execution of the National Cancer Program. It has a mandate to report directly to the President.
Dr. Sandler summed up DCEG’s participation in this important endeavor: “They were very supportive and enthusiastic. These were clearly the people to turn to.”
