Dr Pierre-Antoine Dugué is a Senior Research Fellow in the Precision Medicine team, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, since 2019. His research focuses on investigating associations between genetic/epigenetic/lifestyle factors and risk of and survival from cancer.

Pierre completed undergraduate studies in Mathematics and Physics, and a MSc in Statistics in France, after which he worked as a biostatistician at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Paris) analysing data from clinical trials of colorectal cancer patients. He obtained in 2014 a PhD in Health and Medical Sciences from the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, studying cervical cancer epidemiology and prevention through screening. Late 2014, he moved to Australia where he took up a position as Research Fellow at the Cancer Epidemiology Division, Cancer Council Victoria, and conducted epidemiological studies of the associations between DNA methylation, lifestyle factors and the risk of cancer.

Dr Dugué's goal is to contribute to a better understanding, prediction and prevention of cancer risk and mortality through the use of sound study designs and the integration of lifestyle, administrative, clinical and -omic data.

Opportunities are available for PhD or Master's research projects. See more at the links below, and feel free to contact me should you be interested or have any questions.

https://supervisorconnect.med.monash.edu/projects/enhancing-prediction-cancer-risk-using-dna-methylation-data

https://supervisorconnect.med.monash.edu/projects/inflammation-epigenetics-and-their-role-healthy-aging-and-cancer

Selected publications

Epigenome-wide association studies

Dugué PA, Wilson R, Lehne B, et al. Alcohol consumption is associated with widespread changes in blood DNA methylation: analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Addiction Biol. 2019

Dugué PA, Jung C-H, Joo JE, et al. Smoking and blood DNA methylation: an epigenome-wide association study and assessment of reversibility. Epigenetics, 2019

Li S*, Dugué PA*[co-first], Baglietto L, et al. Genome-wide association study of peripheral blood DNA methylation and conventional mammographic density measures, Int J Cancer, 2019

Chamberlain JA*, Dugué PA*[co-first], Bassett JK, et al. Dietary intake of one-carbon metabolism nutrients and DNA methylation in peripheral blood, Am J Clin Nutr, 2018

Geurts YM*, Dugué PA*[co-first], Joo JE, et al. Novel associations between blood DNA methylation and body mass index in middle-aged and older adults, Int J Obesity, 2017

Blood DNA methylation and cancer risk

Bodelon C, Ambatipudi S, Dugué PA*[co-first], et al. Blood DNA methylation and breast cancer risk: a meta-analysis of four prospective cohort studies, Breast Cancer Res, 2019

Dugué PA, Dowty JG, Joo JE et al., Heritable methylation marks associated with breast and prostate cancer risk, Prostate, 2018

Dugué PA, Milne RL, Hopper JL, DNA methylation‐based biological aging and cancer risk and survival: Pooled analysis of seven prospective studies, Int J Cancer, 2017

Dugué PA, Bassett JK, Joo JE et al. Association of DNA Methylation-Based Biological Age with Health Risk Factors, and Overall and Cause-Specific Mortality, Am J Epidemiol, 2017

Dugué PA* [co-first], Brinkman MT*, Milne RL, et al., Genome-wide measures of DNA methylation in peripheral blood and the risk of urothelial cell carcinoma: a nested prospective case-control study, Br J Cancer, 2016

Cancer screening

Dugué PA, Rebolj M, Hallas J, Garred P, Lynge E. Risk of cervical cancer in women with autoimmune diseases, in relation with their use of immunosuppressants and screening: Population-based cohort study. Int J Cancer, 2015, 136(6):E711-9

Dugué PA, Lynge E, Rebolj M. Mortality of non-participants in cervical screening: Register-based cohort study, Int J Cancer, 2014, 134(11):2674-82

Lifestyle and cancer

Wu Z, […], Dugué PA. Social connectedness and mortality after prostate cancer diagnosis: a prospective cohort study, Int J Cancer, 2019

Dugué PA, Bassett JK, Brinkman MT, et al. Dietary intake of nutrients involved in one-carbon metabolism and risk of gastric cancer: a prospective study, Nutr Cancer, 2019

Dugué PA, Brinkman MT, Hodge AM et al., Dietary intake of nutrients involved in one-carbon metabolism and risk of urothelial cell carcinoma: a prospective cohort study, Int J Cancer, 2018

Seviiri M, […], Dugué PA. Resting heart rate, temporal changes in resting heart rate, and overall and cause-specific mortality, Heart, 2017

Yang Y, […], Dugué PA, Blood pressure and risk of breast cancer, overall and by subtypes: a prospective cohort study, J Hypertens, 2017

Dugué PA, Hodge AM, Brinkman MT et al. Association between selected dietary scores and the risk of urothelial cell carcinoma: A prospective cohort study. Int J Cancer 2016

Letters (replication analyses)

Dugué PA* [co-first], Chamberlain JA, Overall lack of replication of associations between dietary intake of folate and vitamin B-12 and DNA methylation in peripheral blood, Am J Clin Nutr, 2019

Dugué PA, Lynge E, Rebolj, M. Increased risk of high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions in systemic lupus erythematosus: Additional data from Denmark. Autoimmun Rev, 2014, 13(12):1241-2. Letter

Dugué PA, Milne RL, Southey MC. A prospective study of peripheral blood DNA methylation at RPTOR, MGRN1 and RAPSN and risk of breast cancer, Breast Cancer Res Treat, 2017

Book chapter 

Dugué PA, DNA methylation-based measures of biological aging, Chapter 3, Epigenetics in Human Disease, Second Edition, 2018