Dietary Acrylamide
In 2002, the Swedish Food Administration reported elevated levels of the substance acrylamide in commonly consumed foods. Since acrylamide is characterized as a probable human carcinogen, this finding led to concern that intake of foods containing acrylamide could increase risk of cancer. My research has sought to address this public health concern. I have been the first or senior investigator on several projects analyzing data from large Swedish population-based studies to examine whether intake of acrylamide in foods increases the risk of cancer of the large bowel, bladder, kidney, breast and prostate, and have also been a co-investigator on studies within the Nurses’ Health Study on this topic. Related to the work on acrylamide, I have contributed to several journal articles, been an invited participant at multiple research symposia, and was a co-Investigator on two successful grant applications.
Prostate Cancer
My major research area currently focuses on biomarkers of prostate cancer incidence and survival. Within the Physicians Health Study (PHS) and Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS), I oversee the follow-up of almost 8,000 prostate cancer cases and a tumor biorepository including more than 2,500 men with prostate cancer cases. Through continued collaborations with Swedish colleagues, I am an investigator in a population-based cohort of 1,200 Swedish men with localized prostate cancer who have undergone “watchful waiting” as primary treatment. Sweden offers a unique resource for such studies, given the existence of nationwide health registers and access to archival tissue specimens. Using tissue from the three cohorts, I am part of a multidisciplinary team of investigators using array-based technologies to evaluate tissue biomarkers at the RNA, DNA and protein level. This cross-disciplinary effort seeks to develop molecular signatures to distinguish indolent from aggressive prostate cancer, and also to provide insight into the biology of prostate cancer risk factors and progression. The US and Swedish projects are undertaken in concert with the DF/HCC Prostate Cancer SPORE, of which I am an active participant and from which I have received multiple research awards. Currently, we are in the planning stages of a large-scale twin study of prostate cancer, nested within the nationwide twin registries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Moreover, I have developed collaborations with prostate cancer researchers at the University of Iceland, where I now serve as an Adjunct Professor, and where we hope to compliment our current investigations of prostate cancer.