Program Members

Summary

Dr. Yuan is a cancer epidemiologist with extensive experience in research on cancer etiology and prevention. Dr. Yuan’s research lab has been continuously funded by National Cancer Institute for more than two decades. Currently, Dr. Yuan’s research focuses on the impact of obesity on risk of cancer. Dr. Yuan also is leading a team of scientists to evaluate the effectiveness of sulforaphane derived from broccoli on reduction of risk markers for lung cancer in high-risk individuals. As Principal Investigator of both the Shanghai Cohort Study and the Singapore Chinese Health Study, two population-based prospective cohorts of more than 80,000 adults with available baseline blood and urine samples with more than 25 years of active follow-up for cancer and other major health outcomes, Dr. Yuan continues to utilize these large cohort resources to discover and validate novel biomarkers for risk of cancer development. These two cohorts have made several noteworthy contributions to the field of cancer epidemiology including (1) dietary aflatoxins as human hepatocarcinogens, (2) significant roles of immune biomarkers and secondary bile acids for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma, (3) dietary isothiocyanates, a group of phytochemicals found in cruciferous vegetables, as potential chemopreventive agents against lung cancer development, and (4) urinary biomarkers of tobacco-specific nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as specific lung carcinogens in smokers.