Cancer

Cancer genes, environment and behaviour program

Professor Bruce Armstrong heads the Cancer genes, environment and behaviour program, funded by The Medical Foundation. The program aims to increase knowledge of the interacting contributions that genetic, environmental and behavioural factors make to risk and outcomes of cancer through epidemiological studies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, cutaneous melanoma, acute lymphocytic leukaemia and breast cancer.

These studies will add new knowledge to present evidence that environmental and behavioural risk factors are important in the occurrence and the outcome of cancer, and will identify common genetic variants that influence cancer occurrence and outcomes and modify the impact of the environmental risk factors. Given the important role that immune function is thought to play in determining whether clinical cancer develops from an initiated cell and whether related cancer recurs and progresses, the results of our work with variants of immune function genes are likely to be of substantial significance, both in understanding the mechanisms of cancer development and progression and in guiding development of preventive and therapeutic interventions.