Freudenheim gets grant for cancer research
Research to study link between early environmental exposures and breast cancer

By LOIS BAKER
News Services Editor

Jo Freudenheim, professor of social and preventive medicine, has received a three-year, $457,532 grant from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to investigate the relationship between environmental exposure to potential carcinogens early in life and the risk of developing breast cancer.

"This study is an exciting opportunity to increase our understanding of the role of environmental exposures during infancy and menarche (start of menstruation) to health and disease later in life," said Freudenheim. "There is a lot of concern in the community that these exposures are important in breast cancer. This study will give us a chance to examine that question systematically. We are indebted to the large number of women in Western New York who have helped us with this study by spending the time with us to be interviewed. Anything we learn will be because of their cooperation," she said.

Recent research has focused on the early period of a woman's life-her infancy, early childhood and menarche-as potentially sensitive periods for exposures leading to breast cancer in adulthood. Breast tissue grows particularly fast during these periods of infancy and childhood, so it is possible the breast may be more sensitive to environmental insults at these times, Freudenheim said.

"There are just a few studies examining these time periods, and none have focused on these environmental exposures," she said. "With this grant, we will examine environmental exposures and gene-environment interactions at the time of birth and at menarche and subsequent risk of breast cancer."

The new study will piggyback on Freudenheim's ongoing case-control study of breast cancer in Erie and Niagara counties involving about 1,000 women with recently diagnosed breast cancer and 2,000 healthy women. In the studies, the participants provide a list of all the places where they have lived, as well as information on other breast-cancer risk factors. The new grant will allow the researchers to enter residential data into a computer map, along with data on the location of steel mills, chemical factories, gasoline stations, toxic-waste sites and other industrial sites from 1918-80. They then will calculate the distance between these sites and the women's homes at the time of birth and menarche, and compare this information for the participants with and without cancer.

UB researchers also will study whether genetic differences in the body's ability to detoxify potential carcinogens affect the risks related to location of their homes. Women with a fast-acting gene can break down and get rid of toxic substances quicker than women with the slow-acting gene. Freudenheim and colleagues will look for these commonly occurring genetic differences to see if one group is more affected by environmental exposure than others.