2020 Virtual AACR Annual Meeting Features DCEG Research
The 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) was held in a new virtual format from April 27-28 and June 22-24 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The theme was “Turning science into lifesaving care” and the five-day event highlighted the latest scientific advances in basic, clinical, and epidemiologic cancer research.
Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D., senior investigator in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch (MEB), received the Fred P. Li Impact Award for her article, “Collecting Fecal Samples for Microbiome Analyses in Epidemiology Studies,” published in the February 2016 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (CEBP), and its sustained influence in the research community over the last few years. Postdoctoral fellows Minkyo Song, M.D., Ph.D., in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch (IIB), and Jiaqi Huang, Ph.D., in MEB, were awarded Scholar-in-Training Awards, which recognize outstanding young investigators presenting meritorious proffered papers at the AACR Annual Meeting.
Several investigators and fellows gave invited talks.
Olivia Lee, B.S., predoctoral fellow in the Integrative and Tumor Epidemiology Branch (ITEB) discussed, “Pan-cancer genomic characterization of patient-matched primary, extracranial, and brain metastases” during a session titled “Evaluating cancer genomics from normal tissues through evolution to metastatic disease.”
Mary H. Ward, Ph.D., senior investigator in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB), presented, “Pesticides in the field and in the home: What do we know about cancer risk?” which was part of an educational session titled “Carcinogens at home: Science pathways to prevention.”
Jason Wong, Sc.D., research fellow in OEEB, discussed, “Commute patterns, residential traffic-related air pollution, and lung cancer risk in the prospective UK Biobank cohort study” for a session titled “New insight from classic epidemiologic factors.”
Earl Stadtman tenure-track investigator Jill Koshiol, Ph.D., in IIB, chaired a session titled “Infection and immune factors” which included presentations by Dr. Song on “Associations of anti-parietal cell and anti-intrinsic factor antibodies with gastric cancer risk” and IIB chief Eric Engels, M.D., M.P.H., on “Elevated incidence of rare cancers among solid organ transplant recipients (SOTRs) in the United States.”
Dr. Maeve Mullooly, research fellow in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and former postdoctoral fellow in ITEB, received the AACR NextGen Star Award and discussed “Investigation of relationships between breast cancer risk factors and bilateral mammographic breast density asymmetry among women undergoing diagnostic image-guided breast biopsies” for the “NextGen stars spotlight session II: Immunology and breast cancer."
DCEG staff also presented 24 posters. View a full listing of DCEG poster presentations.