DUTCH FEST Speaker

Eleanor Rogan, PhD

Eleanor Rogan, PhD

Eleanor Rogan, PhD, has an extraordinary background. She is a professor at the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Department Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Nebraska Medical Center from 1990 to the present in biochemistry and molecular biology. She is also the Chair of the Department of Environmental, Agriculture and Occupational Health at the College of Public Health. She was the distinguished winner of the Linus Pauling award from the Institute of Functional Medicine in 2006. Her research centers around elucidating mechanisms of activation of carcinogens, identifying carcinogen-DNA adducts, and correlating adducts with oncogenic mutations. From her previous study of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) metabolism and DNA adducts, she has demonstrated that the predominant adducts are lost by depurination, leaving mutagenic apurinic sites in the DNA. This research involved identification and quantitation of PAH-DNA adducts and correlation of the adducts with Harvey-ras mutations in mouse skin papillomas induced by the PAH. She has extended her studies to endogenous catechol estrogen metabolites and found that the carcinogenic metabolites form depurinating N3Ade and N7Gua adducts in DNA. Her team has hypothesized that this is the pathway of initiation for human breast, ovarian, thyroid, prostate and other cancers. Dr. Rogan has been a co-author on more than 28 published peer-reviewed papers.