In this interview from the AACR Annual Meeting 2026, Shuguang Leng, MBBS, PhD, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses research on the association between exposure to wildfire smoke and increased cancer risk.
“As wildfires continue to increase in frequency and intensity, understanding their long-term health impacts is becoming increasingly important,” Dr. Leng said in an AACR press release. “While more research is needed, we hope these findings will help raise awareness and support future studies on the long-term health effects of wildfire smoke.”
Dr. Leng and his team used data from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial to evaluate how wildfire-related particulate matter affects cancer incidence. Dr. Leng discussed the study’s limitations, which included restricted geospatial wildfire smoke exposure data available only through 2006 and the inability to account for human movement patterns and time spent indoors versus outdoors.
