CIDR: Elucidating Epigenetic Mechanisms of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pancreatic Cancer

This is a nested case-control study of 689 pancreatic cancer cases and 807 matched controls from the Multiethnic Cohort Study (MEC) (see dbGaP phs002183), a diverse prospective cohort of >215,000 African American, European American, Japanese American, Latino, and Native Hawaiian individuals from Hawaii and Los Angeles. The objective of this study is to identify blood DNA methylation markers of pancreatic cancer susceptibility and to examine whether epigenetics can partially explain the racial and ethnic disparities of pancreatic cancer. Our specific aims are: 1) to identify multiethnic epigenetic markers of pancreatic cancer risk, 2) to assess whether epigenetics improves the prediction of pancreatic cancer across race and ethnicity, and 3) to evaluate whether epigenetics mediates the association between known modifiable risk factors and pancreatic cancer. The findings from this study are expected to identify potential ethnic-specific carcinogenic processes and elucidate the determinants of racial and ethnic disparities in pancreatic cancer.

• Type: Methylation Sequencing
• Archive: The database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)