Elizabeth Khaykin Cahoon is a Georgian-born American epidemiologist researching cancer and precancer risks conferred by environmental sources of radiation exposure. She is a Stadtman investigator at the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Early life and education

Khaykin was born in

Tbilisi Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the Capital city, capital and the List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city of Georgia (country), Georgia, lying on the ...

, Georgia. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was a child. She earned a B.S.E. in bioengineering from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. She completed a S.M. from the Engineering Systems Division at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Her 2003 master's thesis was titled ''Telemedicine as a disruptive technology: implications for home health agencies and nurses''. Her academic advisor was . As Elizabeth K. Cahoon, she earned a M.H.S. in biostatistics and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epi ...

. Her dissertation was titled, ''Prevention in the severely mentally ill: primary care quality and adverse events among persons with schizophrenia, and the benefit of physical activity on sleep in a community sample of persons with severe mental illness''. Cahoon's doctoral advisors were Jonathan Samet and . She was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of mental health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She joined the radiation epidemiology branch (REB) at the

(NCI) as a postdoctoral fellow in 2010.

Career

Cahoon was promoted to research fellow in 2014. In 2017, she was appointed to the position of Earl Stadtman

Tenure-Track Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

Investigator.

Research

Cahoon researches cancer and precancer risks conferred by environmental sources of radiation exposure. Her program focuses on studies of preventable risk factors that modify the relationship between ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and the risk of skin cancer and other cancers (in the general population in the United States and in people with especially high risk such as organ-transplant recipients, and studies that address unanswered questions about people exposed to ionizing radiation including residents and clean-up workers exposed after the Chernobyl accident (1986) and Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings (1945) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She works to identify medications that modify the relationship between UV radiation and skin cancer risk. Cahoon also evaluates the UV radiation dose-response relationship for skin cancer risk by wavelength, age at exposure, and anatomic site. In addition, Cahoon evaluates the role of UV radiation in viral activation, immune modulation, and other mediators of skin (and other) cancer risk. Her previous work identified a relationship between ambient UV radiation and risk of Kaposi sarcoma, possibly through reactivation of the causative virus, human herpesvirus 8. Cahoon is working towards confirming these findings in independent populations. Cahoon examines radiation-related risk of various cancer types in the lifespan study of Japanese

atomic bomb survivors ''Hibakusha'' ( or ; ja, 被爆者 or ; "person affected by a bomb" or "person affected by exposure o radioactivity) is a word of Japanese origin generally designating the people affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at t ...

and is also leading a thyroid cancer case-control study nested in a cohort of Chernobyl liquidators (i.e., emergency clean-up workers) who were exposed to a large range of external radiation. Cahoon examines the incidence of new thyroid nodules in Belarus and Ukraine and progression of prevalent nodules. These will be the first studies to evaluate whether nodule characteristics associated with increased risk of thyroid cancer, such as size and vascularization, are apparent at clinical diagnosis or whether these characteristics emerge and evolve over time.

Awards and honors

Cahoon has received awards for her work, including the DCEG Intramural Research Award, the DCEG Outstanding Research Paper by a Fellow, and the NIH Award of Merit.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cahoon, Elizabeth K. Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) National Institutes of Health people 21st-century American women scientists American women epidemiologists American epidemiologists Emigrants from Georgia (country) to the United States Naturalized citizens of the United States 21st-century American scientists University of Pennsylvania alumni MIT School of Engineering alumni Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health alumni Cancer epidemiologists