Professor Ruth Travis
Research groups
- Breast Cancer
- Cardiovascular disease
- Diet and nutrition: health of vegetarians and vegans
- Dietary Protein and Stroke Consortium
- Endogenous Hormones and Breast Cancer
- Endogenous Hormones, Nutritional Biomarkers and Prostate Cancer
- EPIC-Prostate
- Health and Lifestyle
- Prostate Cancer
- Shift work and disease
- Work and Social factors
- An investigation into cancer risk factors and mechanisms: a DPhil in molecular epidemiology
- An investigation into cancer risk factors and mechanisms: a DPhil in molecular epidemiology
- Analysing the blood proteome of three poorly understood cancers in Europe
- Assessing the links between shift work, sleep, circadian disruption and subsequent health
- Assessing the role of structural variation on the blood proteome and cancer risk
- Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU)
- Diet and disease: a comprehensive investigation of the impact of plant-based diets on long-term health
- Hormones, growth factors and health outcomes in middle and old age: a PheWAS approach in UK Biobank
- Prostate cancer epidemiology
- The molecular epidemiology of prostate cancer
Colleges
Websites
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Prostate Cancer
Research Group
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EPIC Prostate
Research Group
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UK Biobank Prostate Cancer Epidemiology Consortium
Research Group
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Endogenous Hormones and Prostate Cancer Collaborative Group
Research Group
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Epidemiology of Shift Work and Disease
Research Group
Ruth Travis
BA, MSc, DPhil
Professor of Epidemiology, Senior Molecular Epidemiologist, and Deputy Director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit
- Deputy Director, Cancer Epidemiology Unit
- Molecular Epidemiology Group Lead
- MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology module lead: Non-Communicable Diseases
Ruth Travis is a molecular epidemiologist, whose main research interests are the molecular and lifestyle determinants of common non-communicable diseases, particularly cancer. Her work involves combining the resources of established large cohort studies and international consortia with study designs that take advantage of new technology, both in terms of ‘omics’ and electronic data linkage.
She leads a programme of research on prostate cancer aetiology funded by Cancer Research UK, with a particular focus on risk factors for aggressive disease. A major research interest is the role of circulating biomarkers, including blood proteins, metabolites and hormones in cancer development. She leads a pan-cancer programme on proteomics and other molecular factors, exploiting large-scale biomarker and genetics datasets.
Ruth is Chair of the Prostate Cancer Working Group for the Europe-wide EPIC study, coordinates the Endogenous Hormones, Nutritional Biomarkers and Prostate Cancer Collaborative Group, which aims to conduct individual pooled analyses of the relationship between circulating biomarkers and prostate cancer risk from cohort studies from around the world, and leads prostate cancer epidemiological research in UK Biobank.
Ruth is a member of the EPIC and EPIC-Oxford Steering Committees and she represents EPIC as a member of the PRACTICAL international cancer genetics consortia. Ruth also leads research on the effects of shift work and circadian disruption on chronic conditions and diseases within the Million Women Study, EPIC-Oxford and UK Biobank cohorts.
Ruth studied Biological Anthropology (University of Cambridge, 1997-2000) and Epidemiology (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2000-01), and holds DPhil in Cancer Epidemiology (University of Oxford, 2005).
She joined the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU) in 2001.
Key publications
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Gene-environment interactions in 7610 women with breast cancer: prospective evidence from the Million Women Study.
Journal article
Travis RC. et al, (2010), Lancet, 375, 2143 - 2151
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Incidence of breast cancer and its subtypes in relation to individual and multiple low-penetrance genetic susceptibility loci.
Journal article
Reeves GK. et al, (2010), JAMA, 304, 426 - 434
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Genetic variation in the lactase gene, dairy product intake and risk for prostate cancer in the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition.
Journal article
Travis RC. et al, (2013), Int J Cancer, 132, 1901 - 1910
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CYP19A1 genetic variation in relation to prostate cancer risk and circulating sex hormone concentrations in men from the Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium.
Journal article
Travis RC. et al, (2009), Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 18, 2734 - 2744
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Melatonin and breast cancer: a prospective study.
Journal article
Travis RC. et al, (2004), J Natl Cancer Inst, 96, 475 - 482
Recent publications
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Perturbations in the blood metabolome up to a decade before prostate cancer diagnosis in 4387 matched case-control sets from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.
Journal article
Grenville ZS. et al, (2024), Int J Cancer
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Circulating inflammatory and immune response proteins and endometrial cancer risk: a nested case-control study and Mendelian randomization analyses.
Journal article
Wang SE. et al, (2024), EBioMedicine, 108
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Cluster effect for SNP-SNP interaction pairs for predicting complex traits.
Journal article
Lin H-Y. et al, (2024), Sci Rep, 14
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Identifying proteomic risk factors for overall, aggressive, and early onset prostate cancer using Mendelian Randomisation and tumour spatial transcriptomics.
Journal article
Desai TA. et al, (2024), EBioMedicine, 105
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Circulating free insulin-like growth factor-I and prostate cancer: a case-control study nested in the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition.
Journal article
Cheng TS. et al, (2024), BMC Cancer, 24