françoise clavel-chapelon PhD, Epidemiologist
Course and current status
Research Director at the French Institure for health and Medical research (Inserm) ; Head of the “Nutrition, hormones and women’s health” group at the Research Center in Epidemiology and Population Health (Inserm U1018 and UMR 1018 Paris XI), Institut Gustave-Roussy, Villejuif, France
Scientific summary
FCC has initiated, set up and directed the E3N (Etude Epidémiologique de femmes de l’Education Nationale) French cohort study since 1990. E3N is the French centre of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation on Cancer). FCC has been in charge of its scientific direction since the study was launched and has managed all researchers and technicians working on that cohort.
FCC's research areas have mainly been on two major complementary aspects, namely the role of hormonal and reproductive factors, and the role of diet, on disease outcomes. Conditions initially studied by her research group have essentially been breast and colorectal cancers, then with increasing registering of new cases, thyroid, ovarian, uterus, and melanoma. Most analyses are based on Cox models with age as the time scale.
A new cohort, E4N (Epidemiology 4 kNowledge, or, in French Etude Epidémiologique des Enfants des femmes de l’Education Nationale), will include the spouses, children and grandchildren of the E3N women. Approximately 30,000 of the 70,000 spouses could volunteer, together with 50,000 of the 170,000 sons and daughters.The familial aggregation and familial segregation of polymorphisms and of genes will help explain cancer and other diseases, an avenue with great potential.
