I started my research career conducting clinical outcomes research for an orthopedic surgeon. While pursuing my Masters of Public Health (MPH), I was able to apply my analytic skills to examine screening and treatment for breast and cervical cancer patients in Rhode Island. Seeing the significant impact of research on cancer outcomes inspired me to stay in the cancer research field. I feel fortunate to play a small role in helping cancer patients and their families.”
Elizabeth Bain, MPH, is a senior scientist on the Biospecimen Management team in Population Science at the American Cancer Society. Her team collects, tracks, and manages blood, buccal cell, urine, stool, and tumor tissue samples from Cancer Prevention Study (CPS) participants, including CPS-II and CPS-3. These specimens are used in a variety of ways to examine how genetics, metabolomics, gut microbiome, diet, vitamin D, infections, and many other factors affect a person’s risk of developing cancer.
Although I’m responsible for planning and managing research projects using all types of biospecimen samples, my team’s primary focus is building our tumor tissue repository and our newest collection, stool samples. We collaborate with internal and external researchers, pathologists, and many different labs to collect and process our samples so they are ready for specific research project needs.
Our tumor repository currently has tumor tissues for over 8,000 cancer cases, and we have already collected over 3,500 stool samples to study the gut microbiome and cancer risk. Both projects are ongoing and sample collections will increase each year.
It is exciting to have the opportunity to build and manage these resources that are used to address knowledge gaps about cancer risk and cancer outcomes.
For a full list of Bain's publications, visit her Google Scholar page.
I live in Decatur, GA, with my husband and son. We enjoy swimming in the pool, trips to the beach, and spending most of our weekends on the soccer field.
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