Mission

HUMAN DIVERSITY IN ALL ITS ASPECTS IS A CRITICAL DETERMINANT OF CANCER SUSCEPTIBILITY AND PROGRESSION.

The CancerPrev fellowship program supports innovative and interdisciplinary exchanges for graduate and predoctoral students, with durations ranging from 2 to 9 months at host laboratories. It focuses on four topics of major relevance for cancer prevention, related to chronic inflammatory and/or fibrotic processes:

UV-sun light exposure and skin cancer
Sex hormones exposure and breast cancer
Tobacco use and lung and oral cancer
Nutrition and pancreatic cancer

PROGRAM STRENGTHS: Focus on diversity and under-served populations.

Vision

NOWHERE IS CANCER PREVENTION MORE IMPORTANT THAN FOR SOCIAL GROUPS AND COUNTRIES UNABLE TO FUND ITS TREATMENT.

Our program will dive deep into the genetic, epigenetic, hormonal and extrinsic mechanisms responsible for cancer susceptibility of diverse human populations, across sexual, ancestral and ethnical/social divides. By fostering close interactions and collaborations among participating laboratories, it will integrate basic genetic, epigenetic and functional studies with computational and mathematical approaches to delve into large data sets.

We aim at developing efforts in primary and secondary cancer prevention tailored for diverse human populations and identifying clinically actionable strategies. There is an inherent difficulty in addressing and measuring success in cancer prevention and a poor appreciation of its importance by funding agencies. To address these challenges, it is essential to train a new generation of scientists who are aware of the great opportunities in cancer prevention offered by recent researchadvances, and who are at the same time skilled and committed to science communication and addressing and empowering individuals across diverse human populations.