Early-onset cancers (EOCs) have been on the rise over the past 60 years. Pandora hopes to identify mechanisms linking the exposome (an individual’s lifetime exposures) during critical windows of development, including before birth and in early life, to multiple types of EOC.   

With access to an unparalleled birth cohort of 20,000 pregnancies followed for 60 years over three generations (60,000 individuals), the team hopes to apply novel high-dimensional methods of interrogating the exposome to identify specific exposures and associated gene and metabolic reprogramming linked to EOC. It also aims to explore links between the exposome, metabolome and epigenome in cohorts from Mexico, Europe and Israel.  

The team hopes its analyses will identify metabolic and gene regulatory responses linked to specific exposures and cancer types, enabling development of education resources, remediation plans and policies to decrease exposures.