An American man dies from prostate cancer every 15 minutes
Military Aviator Study
Veterans Prostate Cancer Awareness (VPCa) is dedicated to saving lives by promoting prostate cancer awareness, early detection, and providing solutions among Veterans, active-duty military, and all men.
Are You A Veteran Aviator?
Research has already proven that Veteran men have a significantly greater chance of a prostate cancer diagnosis. Unfortunately, we are discovering that that rate is even higher amount aviators.
VPCa, in collaboration with a team of scientists and medical personnel are dedicated to determining the environmental factors and risk determinants for prostate cancer in military aviators. We have a study entitled ““Identifying Environmental Gene-Expression Signatures in Aviator-Associated Prostate Cancer”, which is a multi-institutional collaboration to evaluate the tumors and blood of military aviators with prostate cancer, to further the state of knowledge in this unique cohort of men.
Stricken: Deaths may be a sign of a rise in cancers in military aviation
A former pilot and squadron commanding officer did some of his own research and found of all squadron commanders of Navy carrier aircraft from 1985 to 2001 were 3 times more likely to develop cancer than their civilian counterparts.
Military Pilots’ DNA May Hold Key to What’s Causing Their Prostate Cancers
Radars, magnetrons, and other toxic exposures may leave unique signatures on aviators’ cells, giving researchers the first evidence of cause.
Tara Copp, Defense One’s Senior Pentagon Reporter dives deeper into why some military aviators have a much higher risk of certain types of cancers, including prostate cancer.
We Need You to Get Involved
VPCa is assisting with the recruitment of former or current military aviators that have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. In accordance with the IRB approved study procedures and requirements we will accept any stage of prostate cancer in the subjects recruited.
Pilots spent hundreds, and sometimes thousands of hours sitting just behind powerful avionics equipment that was placed in the Tomcat’s nose cone. He questions whether there was adequate shielding in those older jets. “It’s long overdue that the services conduct an in-cockpit test to measure the radiation effects they are being exposed to,” VPCa Founder Mike Crosby said.
our partners
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Receive a link to questions regarding your military flight experiences
Receive a diagnositc testing kit at home to complete a non-evasive clinical test to mail back to the clinical research teams.
We will determine the prevalence of PCa in aviator compared to non-aviator veterans.
- We will define the molecular characteristics of this unique cancer patient population and determine the impact of aviation exposure on oncogenesis.
- Our investigations will facilitate identification of candidate molecular patterns specific to this patient population (aviators with PCa) that may have translational relevance across tumor types in similarly exposed patients with other cancers.
- Further epigenomic profiling including DNA methylation status,
- Whole exome sequencing (WES),
- ChIP-seq (histone marks and AR) of our cohorts to elucidate the molecular mechanism behind altered gene expression signatures.
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