Center For Cancer Epidemiology

Mendelian Randomization and Epigenetic Cancer Epidemiology Workshop

Welcome Note

Dear friends

The Centre for Cancer Epidemiology (CCE) is the new centre established by Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, one of the premier tertiary cancer treatment and research centres in South Asia. The aim of CCE is to achieve the goal of cancer control by assessing the cancer burden, identifying lifestyle and genetic risk factors, developing and evaluating low cost screening technologies, evaluating outcomes, and conducting education and training in the field of epidemiology and public health.

In order to train individuals in the field of causal inference in population epigenetics, CCE, in collaboration with the Integrative Cancer Epidemiology Programme (ICEP) and the Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU) at the University of Bristol and the US National Cancer Institute, is organizing a workshop entitled: Mendelian Randomization and Epigenetic Cancer Epidemiology from the 9th to 13th of October 2017. The workshop will cover the following main topics:

* Introduction to conventional epidemiology (including basic statistics, study designs and potential limitations with observational epidemiological studies).
* Mendelian randomization as a method for improving causal inference in a conventional epidemiological context.
* Introduction to epigenetics, epigenetic technologies and the concept of epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS).
* Conducting, analysing and interpreting results from EWAS, considering causality and identifying biomarkers for use in prediction of outcome.

Analyses will be conducted using R package and other publically available statistical & bioinformatics software. Participants with no previous experience with R are therefore encouraged to attend the introductory session on R on 6th October 2017 (Venue: Centre for Cancer Epidemiology (CCE), Tata Memorial Centre, ACTREC campus, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai).