EPIDEMIOLOGIC AND BASIC SCIENCE IN CANCER PREVENTION -
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our vision of cancer prevention at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) extends the "bench to bedside" paradigm of translational research to a "bench to sidewalk" model integrating basic bench, epidemiologic and population sciences. We maintain that prevention demands the translation of basic science as much as cancer treatment does.
The goal of this R25T program, based in the division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at RPCI, is to teach four postdoctoral fellows to develop the ability for interdisciplinary collaboration in cancer prevention research based on the "bench to sidewalk" model. Recruitment will be from fields such as epidemiology, anthropology, biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, medicine, nursing and pathology. Potential fellows will maintain grounding in their core disciplines while reaching beyond those disciplines to forge interdisciplinary collaborations. This will be achieved through the development of a specialized curriculum, other didactic experiences, and in-depth research. To encourage this juxtaposition of disciplines, trainees will work with a primary mentor and one or more secondary mentors in a discipline distinct from but complimentary to that of the primary mentor and trainee. One trainee will be recruited in Year 01 for a three year fellowship. The program will be under the leadership of James Marshall, PhD, the Senior Vice President for Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at RPCI.
This program builds on RPCI's existing strengths: an established history of multidisciplinary collaboration; a strong group of mentors with numerous funded research projects; and a collaborative relationship with the University at Buffalo. The highly interdisciplinary Cancer Prevention program at RPCI is comprised of a diverse group of epidemiologists, nutritionists, basic scientists, and physicians with a strong record of intra-programmatic, and increasingly inter-programmatic, collaboration. This training program, with strong commitment from the faculty, will provide trainees from disparate scientific disciplines the opportunity to take advantage of broad-based expertise in epidemiology, genetics, biochemistry and cell biology, carcinogenesis, chemoprevention, and clinical science. A model for the collaboration we will develop is that between the epidemiologist/social scientist PI, Dr. Marshall, and the biochemist/molecular biologist Co-PI, Dr. Clement Ip.
