Faculty

Polly A. Newcomb

Research Professor Emeritus, Epidemiology

206-667-3476

Education

PhD Epidemiology, University of Washington, 1986
MPH Epidemiology, University of Washington, 1982

Contact

206-667-3476

Fred Hutch Cancer Center
Box 358080 (M4-B402)
1100 Fairview Avenue N., M4-B402
Seattle, WA 98109

Research Areas

Research Interests

My interests are the identification of modifiable risk factors for common cancers--colorectal, breast, and endometrium. Increasingly, my work has focused on better characterizing individuals at risk because of the joint presentation of environmental and genetic factors. Over the past 20 years, I have conducted several large population based case-control studies of cancer etiology. Cases enrolled in these studies now form the basis for cohorts to examine factors associated with survivorship. I am also interested in the observational evaluations of screening efficacy.

Recent Publications (PubMed)

Fusobacterium nucleatum Enrichment in Colorectal Tumor Tissue: Associations With Tumor Characteristics and Survival Outcomes.
(2025)
Gastro Hep Adv 4(6): 100644
Phipps AI, Hill CM, Lin G, Malen RC, Reedy AM, Kahsai O, Ammar H, Curtis K, Ma N, Randolph TW, Ma J, Ogino S, Newcomb PA, Hullar MA
Highly sensitive DNA testing of Fusobacterium nucleatum (Fn) in colorectal tumors.
(2025 May 15)
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev
Hullar MA, Kahsai OJ, Hill C, Levy L, Malen RC, Curtis KR, Ammar H, Sillah A, Reedy AM, Lampe JW, Ogino S, Potter JD, Newcomb PA, Phipps AI
A proteogenomic analysis of the adiposity colorectal cancer relationship identifies GREM1 as a probable mediator.
(2024 Dec 16)
Int J Epidemiol 54(1):
Lee MA, Hatcher CA, Hazelwood E, Goudswaard LJ, Tsilidis KK, Vincent EE, Martin RM, Smith-Byrne K, Brenner H, Cheng I, Kweon SS, Le Marchand L, Newcomb PA, Schoen RE, Peters U, Gunter MJ, Van Guelpen B, Murphy N
Menopausal hormone therapy: assessing associations with breast and colorectal cancers by familial risk.
(2025 Jan 3)
JNCI Cancer Spectr 9(1):
MacInnis RJ, Jenkins MA, Milne RL, John EM, Daly MB, Andrulis IL, Colonna SV, Phillips KA, kConFab Investigators, Le Marchand L, Newcomb PA, Phipps AI, Schmit SL, Macrae FA, Buchanan DD, Gallinger S, Pai RK, Samadder NJ, Giles GG, Southey MC, Hopper JL, Terry MB
Causal debiasing for unknown bias in histopathology-A colon cancer use case.
(2024)
PLoS One 19(11): e0303415
Correa-Medero RL, Pai R, Ebare K, Buchanan DD, Jenkins MA, Phipps AI, Newcomb PA, Gallinger S, Grant R, Le Marchand L, Banerjee I
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