Alcohol and Cancer

Vasilis Vasiliou is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. He received his BSc in Chemistry (1983) and PhD in Biochemical Pharmacology (1988) from the University of Ioannina, Greece. He then trained in gene-environment interactions, molecular toxicology and pharmacogenetics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine at the (1991-1995). In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy where he rose through the ranks to become Professor and Director of the Toxicology Graduate Program. In July 2014, he joined the faculty of Yale University in his new position. His research interests include alcohol metabolism and toxicity, cellular responses to oxidative stress, gene-environment interactions, and pharmacogenetics. Samir Zakhari, is currently the Senior Vice President, Science, at the Distilled Spirits Council since he joined in October 2012. Previously, he spent 28 years at the National Institutes of Health, most recently as Director of Divisions of Basic Research, and Metabolism and Health Effects at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. He obtained his Bachelor and Master degrees from Cairo University in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, respectively. Subsequently, he obtained a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and then joined the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine. He has over 40 years of research experience in the fields of pharmacology, toxicology, biochemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, physiology, genetics, and molecular and cell biology. He authored and co-authored numerous articles about alcohol and cancer, and co-edited two books on the same subject published by Springer.

Alcohol Consumption and Risk of Thyroid Cancer: A Population Based Case-Control Study in Connecticut.- Roles of Cytochrome P450 in Metabolism of Ethanol and Carcinogens.- Glutathione and Transsulfuration in Alcohol-associated Tissue Injury and Carcinogenesis.- Fatty liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma: The pathologist's view.- Alcoholic liver disease accelerates early hepatocellular cancer in a mouse model.- Chronic ethanol consumption and generation of etheno-DNA adducts in cancer-prone tissues.- Role of TGF-beta in Alcohol-Induced Liver Disease.- NANOG-dependent metabolic reprogramming and symmetric division in tumor-initiating stem-like cells.- Diet supplementation with soy protein isolate, but not the isoflavone genistein, protects against alcohol-induced tumor progression in DEN-treated male mice.- ALDH1L1 and ALDH1L2 folate regulatory enzymes in cancer.- Developmental Morphogens & Recovery from Alcoholic Liver Disease.- Suppressed fat mobilization due to PNPLA3 rs738409 -associated liver damage in heavy drinkers: The liver damage feedback hypothesis.- Aldo-Keto Reductases: Multifunctional Proteins as Therapeutic Targets in Diabetes and Inflammatory Disease.- Engineered animal models designed for investigating ethanol metabolism, toxicity and cancer.- Index.