Regina Gale Ziegler is an American biochemist and nutritional epidemiologist who researched dietary, nutritional, anthropometric, and hormonal determinants of cancer risk. She was a senior investigator in the National Cancer Institute's epidemiology and biostatistics program.

Life

Ziegler received a B.A. from

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

. She completed a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Her 1971 dissertation was titled, ''Affinity labelling lysozyme with a carbene''. She earned a M.P.H. from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. After graduate school, she taught international nutrition and global food resources courses at Yale University, Harvard University, and Tufts University. Ziegler joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1979, was tenured in 1987, and has served most recently as a senior investigator in the epidemiology and biostatistics program. Ziegler’s research has focused broadly on dietary, nutritional, anthropometric, and hormonal determinants of cancer risk. Her early work helped characterize the role of vegetables and fruits, individual carotenoids, folate and one-carbon metabolism in cancer etiology. In addition, she has conducted a number of breast cancer studies with emphasis on anthropometry, diet and endogenous hormones and growth factors. She helped design and direct a large, population-based case-control study of breast cancer in Asian-American women to elucidate the modifiable exposures, related to lifestyle and/or environment, that explained the 6-fold difference in breast cancer incidence between Asia and the West. Ziegler collaboratively developed an international pooled analysis of circulating vitamin D concentrations in relation to risk of

colorectal The large intestine, also known as the large bowel, is the last part of the gastrointestinal tract and of the digestive system in tetrapods. Water is absorbed here and the remaining waste material is stored in the rectum as feces before being rem ...

and breast cancer. Ziegler applied her training in chemistry and biochemistry to the development of new and improved methods for measuring various hormones and nutrients in epidemiologic studies. She played a critical role in the successful development of a sensitive assay for assessment of estrogen metabolites and a validated assay for concurrent measurement of the major steroid hormones. Ziegler is a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition and helped establish its

nutritional epidemiology Nutritional epidemiology examines dietary and nutritional factors in relation to disease occurrence at a population level. Nutritional epidemiology is a relatively new field of medical research that studies the relationship between nutrition and ...

research interest section. Ziegler retired in October 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziegler, Regina G Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Swarthmore College alumni UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni National Institutes of Health people Yale University faculty Harvard University faculty Tufts University faculty Cancer epidemiologists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American biochemists 21st-century American biochemists American women epidemiologists American epidemiologists American women biochemists Fellows of the American Society for Nutrition