Director, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Program
U.S. National Cancer Institute
Bethesda, Maryland
Bob Hoover is widely recognized as one of the nation's leading cancer epidemiologists for his pioneering research in identifying environmental and genetic determinants of cancer. Although his background and major area of interest have been in hormonal carcinogenesis, his broad research portfolio has been defined by his wide ranging and eclectic scientific interests.
Throughout his career, Bob has drawn upon his strong clinical, biological, and public health orientation to develop an innovative epidemiologic research program that has made significant contributions to the understanding of cancer etiology and prevention. His career is notable for a series of "firsts." He was the first to quantify and characterize the risk of lymphoma and other cancers associated with the use of immunosuppressive drugs; to quantify the risk of leukemia due to the use of alkylating agents in the treatment of cancer; and to identify temporary work in shipyards during World War II at a time of heavy asbestos exposure as a major determinant of the high risk of lung cancer in various coastal areas of the United States.
In 1976, he was the first to report an epidemiologic association between hormone replacement therapy and increased risk of breast cancer. This major finding anticipated the results for breast cancer from the NIH-sponsored Women's Health Initiative by nearly 30 years. He confirmed and extended his results in later studies by showing that the estrogen-progestin hormone replacement regimen increases breast cancer risk beyond that of estrogen alone. Bob's interest in early life hormonal exposures led him, in the early 1990's, to coordinate the reassembly of all U.S.-based cohorts of diethylstilbestrol (DES)-exposed children and mothers that had been previously studied, as well as a comparable group of young unexposed women. By comparing the cancer incidence of both groups from 1978 through 1994 to that expected in the general population, he carried out the first direct measurement of the risk of clear cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina and cervix in the population of exposed women, and established an excess risk of squamous cancers of the cervix in this same population. In a recent long-term follow-up, he has found new evidence that women with prenatal exposure to DES have an increased risk of breast cancer after age 40. This work extends the evidence that he and others have presented on the possible role of prenatal exposures to endogenous estrogens in the origins of breast cancer. For his ground-breaking work, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the DES ACTION USA, a national, nonprofit consumer organization dedicated to informing the public about DES.
Bob is also recognized for his research on identifying environmental factors that impact cancer development. His identification of relationships between bladder cancer and drinking water quality and exposure to motor vehicle exhausts established the first of such links. He has also been a major contributor to research associating exposure to certain herbicides to risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
In his current role as Director of the NCI Epidemiology and Biostatics Program, Bob has been a major force in designing large-scale epidemiologic studies with biomarkers to investigate the role of environmental, hormonal (endogenous), and genetic factors and their interactions in cancer etiology. He plays a leading role in the NCI Cohort Consortium, a large-scale international coalition of epidemiologists and genomicists who are pooling data from population cohorts in a coordinated effort to study gene-gene and gene environment interactions in the etiology of cancer. One of the most notable successes of the Cohort Consortium is the Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS) initiative, where Bob and his colleagues have led a series of genome-wide association studies that have generated landmark findings pinpointing genetic regions associated with the risk of breast and prostate cancers.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Abraham Lilienfeld Award from the American College of Epidemiology, the John Snow Award from the American Public Health Association, the NIH Robert S. Gordon Award Lecture, the Distinguished Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service, and the American Association for Cancer Research-American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention.
In addition to shaping the field of cancer epidemiology, Bob has inspired many others by his insight and example, while training and mentoring a number of leading cancer epidemiologists in this country and abroad. Bob received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and his M.D. from Loyola University of Chicago. He completed his doctoral training in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, from which he also received the Alumni Award of Merit in 2002.
