Funded by 2012 The V Foundation Wine Celebration
and Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic
The attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) on Sept 11, 2001 created an environmental exposure to WTC aerosolized dust and gases that contained known and suspected carcinogens. We continue to prospectively follow the entire FDNY cohort of firefighters and emergency medical service (EMS) workers that were exposed to these carcinogens for cancer incidence and have proposed to conduct studies to estimate the prevalence of blood cancers (myeloma and myelodysplastic syndromes) and pre-cancerous conditions in a subset of this cohort. Studies being conducted at Dr Landgren’s lab at Sloan Kettering are analyzing the proteins in the blood samples for detection of myeloma and pre-myeloma disorders. Studies at Dr Verma’s lab are using genome sequencing technologies to detect for the presence of cancer associated mutations in these samples. Dr Prezant’s group at FDNY has built infrastructure for the collection of the samples and has led to successful banking of over 3000 samples from firefighters exposed to the WTC disaster. Data generated from these studies will uncover the effects of WTC exposure on the development of blood disorders and also demonstrate the role of environmental exposures on cancer in general.
