Jun 12, 2020
While many think of epidemiology
as indicative of infectious disease, it actually designates the
study of patterns of disease. Amanda Phipps explains this and her
research into colorectal
cancer.
She discusses
- How a cancer epidemiologist begins to approach colorectal cancer,
- What types of samples they are able to find and what types of patterns they are looking for, and
- How microbiomes factor into their studies and what may be significant.
Amanda Phipps is Associate
Professor of Epidemiology and the Associate Chair of Epidemiology
at the University of Washington.
She explains that
cancer epidemiology entails asking what puts some people at
risk, why do some people develop certain kinds of
cancer like breast
cancer while others don't develop any or develop different
kinds. Further, among those who do develop cancer, what predicts a
good prognoses versus bad?
She remarks that researchers try
and get very specific about their subsets of study. Even with the
same type of
cancer like breast or colorectal
cancer, each
cancer is very different. There are different sets of
genetic changes, risk factors, and courses of treatment.
She discusses her research into colorectal
cancer and the effort to gather as much data about their
subjects as possible to identify certain patterns. She is
also looking at the microbiomes from the tissue samples of these
patients, comparing cancerous and noncancerous tissues.
She explains their methodology and tests they perform, including the DDR PCR test, as well as a bacterium they've identified that seems to show a significant pattern in relation to colorectal cancer. She also touches on some other studies and future interests including immunotherapy responses and investigating associations between sleep apnea and certain cancers.
To find out more, see her
faculty web page: https://epi.washington.edu/faculty/phipps-amanda
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK