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Susanne Arnold: One of the things that made me go into cancer research was the fact that
I live in Kentucky. I'm an eighth-generation Kentuckian and my state has the highest rate
of lung cancer, colorectal cancer in the entire nation. And in parts of Kentucky Southeastern
in particular, which is one of the beautiful parts of the state, the lung cancer burden
is enormous. It dwarfs everywhere else in our state and in our nation. And there's
got to be something more to that than just smoking. So we starting looking into environmental
stresses, lifestyle, genetics and all the things that could lead to cancer because we
believe that is a focus at the Markey Cancer Center and the University of Kentucky have
to have if we are going to be leading the state and the nation in research and in improving
the life's of Kentuckians. Which is our goal.
VO: For more than two decades, the Markey Cancer Center in Lexington has partnered with
the Center for Excellence in Rural Health in Hazard. This partnership includes the nationally
recognized program Kentucky Homeplace, in which community health workers connect people
in their hometown with UK cancer researchers.
Fran Feltner: They are from the communities that they serve, our community health workers,
which absolutely know the knowledge of their communities, they know it like the back of
their hand and they can reach the people in the community that the research projects need
to reach.
VO: In 2011, the Department of Defense awarded Susanne Arnold a three-year grant to study
potential environmental reasons for the high lung cancer rates in Eastern Kentucky.
Susanne Arnold: What the homeplace people do is actually go into the homes of volunteers
who have cancer and also normal volunteers and do a long questionnaire where they discuss
environmental exposures, job history and a like. As well as, collecting water and soil
samples from the home and interestingly hair, blood, urine and toenails. Toenails being
the way we can tell what kind of exposures to trace elements people have had within the
past 6 months and analyzing and comparing the people with cancer to those that don't
have cancer to see if there is a different signal in that population.
So some of the most common trace elements that are known carcinogens: are arsenic, cadmium,
chromium, nickel, and lead. And we are looking at a panel of 13 or 14 different trace elements
including those to see if we can find out why there's more cancer in this area and
to see which of those trace elements might actually contribute to the development of
lung cancer in this region.
We will learn something from this study, that will make us think of something new and hopefully
that something new will impact the people of this region and help to detect cancer early
or help to figure out how to avoid the cancer in the first place.
Fran Feltner: I think people are willing to be participants in a study that will enable
them to find out more information that maybe can prevent or lower the rates of lung cancer
in their community, for their family members even.
Susanne Arnold: 800 people a year are diagnosed with lung cancer in this part of Kentucky,
not all of Kentucky, just in Southeast Kentucky. Over 800 a year, that's just a tragedy,
so if we can reach and touch half of that group we may really make a difference.