POOLED ANALYSIS OF PROSPECTIVE ONCOLOGY ACADEMIC AWARD

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DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) Candidate: Stephanie Smith-Warner received her doctoral degree in epidemiology, with a focus on nutritional epidemiology, from the University of Minnesota. She has been involved with the conduct of several types of epidemiologic studies and has experience in the areas of study design, questionnaire development, data management and data analysis. Dr. Smith-Warner is interested in strengthening her research background and development as an independent researcher in the fields of cancer epidemiology and nutritional epidemiology. Environment: Dr. David J. Hunter, the current Project Leader of the Pooling Project, has agreed to be the sponsor for this proposal. Dr. Hunter has extensive experience in mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in diverse areas of study. In addition, the Principal Investigators of the individual studies included in the Pooling Project are enthusiastic about expanding their collaboration to evaluate diet and lung cancer associations. Finally, faculty in the Nutrition Department at the Harvard School of Public Health actively collaborate with scientists in other departments and institutions. This multifaceted, collaborative environment provides unique opportunities for furthering Dr. Smith-Warner's research training. Research Proposal: This proposal builds upon the existing Pooling Project of Prospective Studies and Cancer to evaluate associations between diet and lung cancer, a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Pooling data from multiple studies will permit more precise estimation of the associations and more standardized categorization of exposures and covariates. From the eight studies comprising the Pooling Project for these analyses, approximately 1,753 female and 1,945 male lung cancer cases were ascertained prospectively. The association between lung cancer and fruits and vegetables will be evaluated to determine whether specific fruits and vegetables, rather than total consumption, are most strongly related to lung cancer risk. Due to the recent controversy surrounding the association between B-carotene and lung cancer, the relationship with individual carotenoids will be assessed. Relationships with vitamins A, C and E, fat, cholesterol and alcohol also will be evaluated. A methods development aim is to use new analyses of diet diversity and diet indices to examine the effects of total diet, rather than individual components. For each exposure effect modification by smoking status and gender will be examined. These analyses will take full advantage of extensive data already collected in the individual cohorts to provide a powerful analysis of the relation between diet and lung cancer.