This program is aimed at testing the hypothesis that environmental factors and lifestyles increase the risk of cancer by provoking specific epigenomic changes in tissue stem cells. The epigenome, indeed, is a signal transduction platform that converts environmental inputs into mitotically transmissible modifications of the various DNA functions.

Epigenomic changes identified in this manner will be validated as molecular markers for the quantitation of the environmental risk of cancer and eventually used as starting points for novel chemoprevention and early-cancer detection programs. Pivotal to the success of this program is the set-up of a Genomic Platform, for the analysis of biological samples, and a Computational Platform, for the acquisition, storage, processing and automated analysis of genomic data.