Research Portfolio: Meningioma Epidemiology Project
Principal Investigator:
Elizabeth B. Claus, Ph.D., M.D., Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Yale University
Project Summary and Update as of 9/30/06
Owing to the solid pilot data and tested research protocols they generated with BSF funding, Dr. Elizabeth Claus and her colleagues have been awarded a multi-million dollar epidemiological grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), bolstering the team’s multi-dimensional effort to comprehensively examine the environmental, genetic, pathologic, and clinical variables associated with meningioma risk. Dr. Claus’s epidemiologic study will be the first of this magnitude to examine the risk factors for and outcomes of a meningioma diagnosis. Dr. Claus credits start-up funds from BSF for enabling her to win this noteworthy award, thereby elevating a local project to a national level.
Administered by a Meningioma Consortium comprised of Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Yale University, Duke University, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of California at San Francisco, this study design is that of a control study and proposes to collect 1,600 cases and 1,600 controls. For this study, which will involve more than 1,000 hospitals, the following materials have been developed: letters of introduction to physicians asking for their cooperation, authorization letters for review of medical records and histology specimens, HIPAA compliant forms for genetic testing (present and future) as well as for storage of biologic specimens.
With the exception of Partners Healthcare for (BWH), Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval has been obtained at 4 of the 5 participating centers and provided by the Departments of Public Health in Connecticut and North Carolina. Additionally, BSF funding has allowed Dr. Claus to continue work with a variety of IRBs to obtain approval for the study within Massachusetts.
This year, BSF funding has facilitated various developments deemed critical to this project:
- In May 2006, Dr. Claus traveled to Visby, Sweden to attend the Brain Tumor Epidemiology Consortium (BTEC) meeting. At this site, Dr. Claus held a one-day meeting with the collaborators of her Meningioma Consortium grant (Drs. Margaret Wrensch (USCF), Joellen Schildkraut (Duke), Pete Inskip (NIH) and Siegal Sadetski (Israel/Interphone study) to develop the radiation and cellular telephone components of the meningioma study questionnaire.
- Dr. Claus has continued to develop the main questionnaire for the Meningioma Consortium. To date, the introduction is complete as well as sections on endogenous and exogenous hormones, pregnancy, menstrual history, family history, fertility, medical and surgical history.
- Dr. Claus’s team has continued to analyze meningioma microarray data for specimens collected for the aspects of the multi-center study to be completed at BWH, including pathology specimen collection and review as well as immunohistochemical testing. Interestingly, although preliminary and, in a small sample, initial results seem to indicate a greater association for progesterone rather than estrogen receptors in the overexpression of genes in meningioma samples.
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