Analysing risk factors for urological cancers

background

Urological cancers are substantially more common in men than women, with the global incidence of kidney cancer in men approximately twice that in women, and more than 3-fold for bladder cancer. This is partly attributed to variation by sex in known risk factors, such as smoking, but this does not fully account for the observed differences in incidence. Some reports indicate that reproductive factors may be associated with risk of kidney cancer in women, but evidence is mixed. In addition, while some risk factors are common across urological cancers, there is evidence that the magnitude of these associations varies substantially between different urological cancers. This variation by sex and between cancer types likely indicates key underlying biological differences. Improving our understanding of the reasons for these differences will thus give important mechanistic insights into disease aetiology to inform strategies for prevention and early detection. However, previous studies have often been too small to reliably investigate these questions.

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE, RESEARCH METHODS AND TRAINING

The aim of this project is to explore risk factors for urological cancers, including lifestyle and reproductive factors, triangulating results from several large prospective cohort studies. The Million Women Study cohort of 1.3 million UK women includes more than 3000 cases of bladder cancer and more than 5000 cases of kidney cancer, making it probably the largest such study in which to investigate risk factors for urological cancers in women. Any associations identified will be replicated in the UK Biobank cohort of 0.5 million UK men and women, including with Mendelian randomisation methods where appropriate.

The student will gain experience in methods of cancer epidemiology research and analysis of data from large prospective studies. They will also develop skills in triangulating results from multiple analyses across different studies, in order to consider underlying biological and mechanistic hypotheses. The student will be encouraged to publish peer-reviewed papers arising from their research.

FIELD WORK, SECONDMENTS, INDUSTRY PLACEMENTS AND TRAINING

Training will be provided as necessary in epidemiological and advanced statistical analysis methods, as well as in scientific writing and presentation skills. Attendance at seminars, workshops and courses provided by the Department and University will also be encouraged. There will be opportunity to present results at relevant national/ international conferences.

PROSPECTIVE  STUDENT

The ideal candidate will have a Master’s degree in a relevant area (e.g. statistics/ epidemiology) and experience with statistical analysis in STATA or R. More importantly, they will be excited by the potential for using large-scale population health data to investigate clinically important questions in cancer biology.