Early Life Exposures and Cancer

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• Overview
• Funding Opportunities

Overview

It is becoming increasingly evident that early-life events and exposures have important consequences for cancer development later in life. However, epidemiological studies of early-life factors and cancer development later in life have had significant methodological challenges such as the long latency period, the distinctiveness of each cancer and large number of subjects that must be studied, all likely to increase costs.

These traditional hurdles might be mitigated by leveraging several existing large-scale prospective studies in the United States and globally, as well as birth databases and birth cohorts, in order to launch both association and mechanistic studies of early-life exposures and cancer development later in life. Dedicated research funding will be needed to advance this paradigm shift in cancer research and it seems justified by its potential to produce transformative understanding of how cancer develops over the life-course. This in turn has the potential to transform cancer prevention strategies through interventions in early-life rather than later in life, as is the current practice, where it is perhaps less effective.

Funding Opportunities

There are not currently any specific NCI Requests for Applications (RFAs) or Program Announcements (PAs) for early life exposures and cancer research. EGRP encourages investigator-initiated grant applications on early life exposures and cancer topics.

View NIH Parent Announcements

EGRP joins with other NCI Divisions, Offices, and Centers and other Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund grant applications submitted in response to funding opportunities.

View the full list of EGRP funding opportunities