) This proposal describes a five-year plan developed for a Preventive Oncology Award and outlines a program which integrates education, teaching and research to develop my skills in biostatistics, epidemiology, and oncology. The research plan outlined is a multifaceted one designed not only to help me develop my goals but also to provide me with practical experience in conducting epidemiologic research. This research plan consists of three projects: 1) the clinical application of longitudinal and stochastic data analyses to chemoprevention trials, 2) the genetic epidemiology of bleomycin sensitivity, and 3) the application of a multivariate survival model to genetic models. Project 1 uses data from two funded clinical trials of chemopreventive agents. The first component proposes to analyze the effect of vitamin C on bleomycin-induced chromosome instability, while the second component involves analyzing data from a trial investigating the chemopreventive aspects of 13-cis retinoic acid. In both components, sequential data on bleomycin sensitivity have been collected at several time points and the analysis incorporates traditional and novel analytic techniques. Project 2 builds on some current research indicating that hypersensitivity to bleomycin may be a familial trait. This project identifies thirty bleomycin-hypersensitive individuals from ongoing studies at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and their relatives, interviewing and collecting blood samples from them. Project 3 expands the application of complex survival models known as frailty models to familial data. My role in this study is to develop programs to test the new class of models and to develop the interpretations of these models. This research project is designed to expand my skills in a number of areas. All three research projects involve the application of complex statistical models to current problems in cancer prevention research. While each component of the research and education programs can stand alone, together they are a broad-based research plan that I am confident will allow me to move into cancer prevention research and to be a competitive researcher.
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