CONTACT: Julie Toland, [email protected](806) 743-2160
TTUHSC RESEARCHER JOINS IN NATO-FUNDED PROJECTCONTACT: Julie Toland, [email protected](806) 743-2160
TTUHSC RESEARCHER JOINS IN NATO-FUNDED PROJECT
A Texas Tech Health Sciences Center researcher is part of an international team in a NATO-funded project to investigate incidence of cancer in the former Soviet Union.
Barbara Pence, Ph.D., professor of pathology and associate vice president for research at TTUHSC, recently traveled to the Republic of Uzbekistan with her son and team member, Spencer Wells, Ph.D., head of the Population Genetics Group at Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University. The researchers joined forces with two Uzbek doctors to investigate whether people living in the geographic area around the Aral Sea in the Republic of Uzbekistan are at increased risk for developing cancer because of exposure to agricultural chemicals, causing genetic damage to DNA.
"The incidence of esophageal cancer around the Aral Sea is very high - perhaps the highest in the world - especially in western Uzbekistan," Pence said. "We think this is primarily due to increasing levels of agriculture chemicals contaminating the water supply and soil. In addition, the loss of water volume in the Aral Sea has produced a highly irritating airborne dust. So the interaction of these two factors is likely to contribute to the increase in esophageal cancer in the region."
Pence said many people are dying of cancer in the region and the life expectancy is now in the late 30s or early 40s. "It is tragic, the number of relatively young people who have this tumor," she said.
Blood and tumor tissue were collected from patients with esophageal cancer and from farm workers who have been exposed to pesticides. About half of the needed samples were collected during the trip. A post-doctorate fellow in Uzbekistan will finish collecting blood samples.
Most of the DNA analysis will be performed at Oxford, while some will be done in Lubbock. Dr. Ruslan Ruzibakiev, director of the Institute of Immunology at the Uzbek Academy of Sciences and a project team member, will travel to Lubbock in the spring to observe first hand the analysis being done here.
"It really struck me how appreciative the Uzbekistan people - from the health minister to the regional doctors - were of the attention Western doctors and scientists were paying to their health," Pence said. "They have tried to do s A Texas Tech Health Sciences Center researcher is part of an international team in a NATO-funded project to investigate incidence of cancer in the former Soviet Union.
Barbara Pence, Ph.D., professor of pathology and associate vice president for research at TTUHSC, recently traveled to the Republic of Uzbekistan with her son and team member, Spencer Wells, Ph.D., head of the Population Genetics Group at Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University. The researchers joined forces with two Uzbek doctors to investigate whether people living in the geographic area around the Aral Sea in the Republic of Uzbekistan are at increased risk for developing cancer because of exposure to agricultural chemicals, causing genetic damage to DNA.
"The incidence of esophageal cancer around the Aral Sea is very high - perhaps the highest in the world - especially in western Uzbekistan," Pence said. "We think this is primarily due to increasing levels of agriculture chemicals contaminating the water supply and soil. In addition, the loss of water volume in the Aral Sea has produced a highly irritating airborne dust. So the interaction of these two factors is likely to contribute to the increase in esophageal cancer in the region."
Pence said many people are dying of cancer in the region and the life expectancy is now in the late 30s or early 40s. "It is tragic, the number of relatively young people who have this tumor," she said.
Blood and tumor tissue were collected from patients with esophageal cancer and from farm workers who have been exposed to pesticides. About half of the needed samples were collected during the trip. A post-doctorate fellow in Uzbekistan will finish collecting blood samples.
Most of the DNA analysis will be performed at Oxford, while some will be done in Lubbock. Dr. Ruslan Ruzibakiev, director of the Institute of Immunology at the Uzbek Academy of Sciences and a project team member, will travel to Lubbock in the spring to observe first hand the analysis being done here.
"It really struck me how appreciative the Uzbekistan people - from the health minister to the regional doctors - were of the attention Western doctors and scientists were paying to their health," Pence said. "They have tried to do so much with so little."
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