Cancer Epidemiology to be Discussed in Minnesota State Mankato's 32nd Annual Leonard A. Ford Lectures

Tuesday, September 6, 2022
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Technical talk

Mankato, Minn. – Christian Abnet, chief of the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch and senior investigator for the National Cancer Institute, will deliver two lectures on cancer epidemiology Tuesday, Sept. 6 in Minnesota State University, Mankato’s 32^nd Leonard A. Ford Lectureship.

Both lectures are free to the public and will be held in Centennial Student Union’s Ostrander Auditorium.

Abnet will give a technical talk at 10 a.m. on Sept. 6 titled “Cancer Epidemiology: How studying whole, free-living people complements other strategies of understanding cancer causing or preventing exposures.”

According to a provided abstract, Abnet in his technical talk will discuss how “the causes of and methods to prevent human cancer are multifactorial and can only be elucidated using multiple strategies. Observational studies of free-living people (i.e., epidemiology) are a critical complement to animal, cell culture and biochemical analyses when seeking to understand human cancer.”

Abnet will present a general talk at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 6 titled “Cancer Epidemiology: How we describe the burden, investigate the causes, and discover the means of cancer prevention.”

According to a provided abstract, Abnet in his evening general talk will discuss how “cancer epidemiology is a broad field under the umbrella of public health research. Cancer epidemiology makes multiple major contributions to our understanding of cancer in humans. First, descriptive epidemiology is used to describe the burden of cancer in different populations and the changing trends in the number of new cancer cases and the number of people that die from different types of cancer.”

According to his online biography, Abnet is “a leading expert on the etiology of esophageal and gastric cancer and in the study of the oral microbiome. Abnet earned a Ph.D. in environmental toxicology from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in public health degree in epidemiology from the University of Minnesota. He joined the National Cancer Institute as a cancer prevention fellow in the Division of Cancer Prevention and subsequently was appointed as a tenure-track investigator in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.”

The event is sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Geology in Minnesota State Mankato’s College of Science, Engineering & Technology.

For more information, contact Christine Cords, office manager in the Department of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Geology, at 507-389-1963, or christine.cords@mnsu.edu.

Minnesota State Mankato, a comprehensive university with 14,546 students, is part of the Minnesota State system, which includes 26 colleges and seven universities.