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Background: More than 62 million people self-identified as Hispanic/Latino (H/L) in the 2020 United States census. The U.S. H/L population has higher burden of certain cancers compared with their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Methods: Key term search using the NIH Query/View/Report (QVR) system, along with Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization codes identified cancer epidemiology research grants in H/L populations funded by the NCI as a primary or secondary funder from fiscal years 2016 through 2021. Three reviewers identified eligible grants based on specified inclusion/exclusion criteria and a codebook for consistency extracting key characteristics. Results: A total of 450 grants were identified through the QVR system using key words related to H/Ls; 41 cancer epidemiology grants remained after applying exclusion criteria. These grants contained specific aims focused on H/Ls (32%) or included H/Ls as part of a racial/ethnic comparison (68%). NCI was the primary funder of the majority of the grants (85%), and most of the research grants focused on cancer etiology (44%) and/or survivorship (49%). Few grants (10%) investigated environmental exposures. Conclusions: This article provides an overview of NCI-funded cancer epidemiology research in H/L populations from 2016 to 2021. Future cancer epidemiology research should reflect the changing dynamics of the U.S. demography with diverse, representative populations and well-characterized ethnicity. Impact: Research that carefully measures the relevant biological, environmental, behavioral, psychologic, sociocultural, and clinical risk factors will be critical to better understanding the nuanced patterns influencing cancer-related outcomes in the heterogenous H/L population.

Background: Epidemiologic studies have reported that frequent consumption of quercetin-rich foods is inversely associated with lung cancer incidence. A quercetin-rich diet might modulate microRNA (miR) expression; however, this mechanism has not been fully examined.Methods: miR expression data were measured by a custom-made array in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples from 264 lung cancer cases (144 adenocarcinomas and 120 squamous cell carcinomas). Intake of quercetin-rich foods was derived from a food-frequency questionnaire. In individual-miR–based analyses, we compared the expression of miRs (n = 198) between lung cancer cases consuming high versus low quercetin-rich food intake using multivariate ANOVA tests. In family-miR–based analyses, we used Functional Class Scoring (FCS) to assess differential effect on biologically functional miR families. We accounted for multiple testing using 10,000 global permutations (significance at Pglobal < 0.10). All multivariate analyses were conducted separately by histology and by smoking status (former and current smokers).Results: Family-based analyses showed that a quercetin-rich diet differentiated miR expression profiles of the tumor suppressor let-7 family among adenocarcinomas (PFCS < 0.001). Other significantly differentiated miR families included carcinogenesis-related miR-146, miR-26, and miR-17 (PFCS < 0.05). In individual-based analyses, we found that among former and current smokers with adenocarcinoma, 33 miRs were observed to be differentiated between highest and lowest quercetin-rich food consumers (23 expected by chance; Pglobal = 0.047).Conclusions: We observed differential expression of key biologically functional miRs between high versus low consumers of quercetin-rich foods in adenocarcinoma cases.Impact: Our findings provide preliminary evidence on the mechanism underlying quercetin-related lung carcinogenesis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(12); 2176–84. ©2012 AACR.

PDF file - 80K, List of miRs (N=198) retained from chip array analysis

PDF file - 54K, All identified miR groups based on "seed" sequence (2-7nt)

PDF file - 47K, Food groups and individual food items

PDF file - 5418K, Hierarchical clustering heat map of miR expression levels for 25 miRs that displayed significant differential expression among former smokers with adenocarcinoma in the individual miR-based analysis. Average linkage was used to cluster miRs and samples with a distance metric of 1 minus centered correlation using BRB-ArrayTools version 4.2. Tertiles define subjects with low (Tertile 1) and high (Tertile 3) consumption of quercetin-rich food.

PDF file - 3580K, Hierarchical clustering heat map of miR expression levels for 10 miRs that displayed significant differential expression among former smokers with squamous cell carcinoma in the individual miR-based analysis. Average linkage was used to cluster miRs and samples with a distance metric of 1 minus centered correlation using BRB-ArrayTools version 4.2. Tertiles define subjects with low (Tertile 1) and high (Tertile 3) consumption of quercetin-rich food.

PDF file - 51K, Selected characteristics of included and excluded EAGLE cases