Eleanor G. Rogan, PhD
Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives, UNMC College of Public Health
Professor, UNMC Department of Environmental, Agricultural & Occupational Health
Eleanor G Rogan, PhD, joined UNMC in 1973 and currently serves as chair and professor in the Department of Environmental, Agricultural & Occupational Health in the College of Public Health. She also is an investigator in the Central States Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at UNMC.
Dr. Rogan previously served as interim associate dean for research in the College of Public Health, and as a professor in the UNMC Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases and the UNMC Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy.
Previously, she was a research associate with E. Cavalieri in the Eppley Institute and with J.H. Coggin Jr. in the University of Tennessee Department of Microbiology, where she also served as a postdoctoral fellow with K.J. Monty.
She was a lecturer in the Department of Biology at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, and predoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore through the U.S. Public Health Service.
- AB, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, 1963
- PhD, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD, 1968
- Post-Doc, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 1969-71
Dr. Rogan's research centers around elucidating mechanisms of activation of carcinogens, identifying carcinogen-DNA adducts, and correlating adducts with oncogenic mutations. From a previous study of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and estrogen 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 and estrogen-DNA adducts and correlation of the adducts with mutations in mouse or rat tumors. Her studies include endogenous catechol estrogen metabolites, and she found that the carcinogenic metabolites form DNA adducts in human DNA. She hypothesizes that this is the pathway of initiation for human breast, ovarian, thyroid, prostate and other cancers. Studies in test tubes, laboratory animal models, cell culture models and human subjects have demonstrated the validity of this hypothesis, which leads to investigation of early detection of cancer risk and prevention of cancer by selected natural compounds. In addition, she has found that the same mechanism forming estrogen-DNA adducts is present in Fuchs Eye Corneal Dystrophy, a disorder leading to blindness. She is also investigating the possible role of waterborne agrichemicals in the high incidence of pediatric cancers in Nebraska.
- Cavalieri, E.L., and Rogan, E.G. Etiology and prevention of prevalent types of cancer. J. Rare Dis Res Treat., pp. 22-29, 2017.
- Cavalieri, E.L., Rogan, E.G. and Zahid, M. Critical depurinating DNA adducts: estrogen adducts in the etiology and prevention of cancer and dopamine adducts in the etiology and prevention of Parkinson’s disease. Int. J. Cancer, doi: 10.1002/ijc.0728, 2017.
- Cavalieri, E.L. and Rogan, E.G. Inhibition of depurinating estrogen-DNA adduct formation in the prevention of breast and other cancers. In: Russo, J., ed. Trends in Breast Cancer Prevention, Chapter 6, Springer, Switzerland, pp. 113-145, 2016.
- Rogan, E. G. and Cavalieri, E.L. Oxidative metabolism of estrogens in cancer initiation and prevention. In: Oxidative Stress: Diagnostics, Prevention, and Therapy, ACS Symposium Series, ACS Books, Washington, DC, 2: 35-51, 2015.
- Muran, P., Muran, S., Beseler, C.L., Cavalieri, E.L., Rogan, E.G. and Zahid, M. Breast health and reducing breast cancer risk, a functional medicine approach. J. Altern. Complement. Med., 21: 321-326 (2015).
- American Public Health Association