Abstract PL04-01: Metabolic approaches to cancer prevention

It is well known that macronutrient intake and exercise influence cancer risk (1). They also have important metabolic effects because they determine energy balance at the whole organism level. There is accumulating evidence that the association between obesity and cancer risk may be attributable to the endocrine-metabolic consequences of chronic positive energy balance.Examples of candidate mediators of the effect of excess energy intake on risk of cancer are increased insulin levels and decreased adiponectin levels (2,3). Mechanistically, by increasing PI3K pathway activation (due to hyperinsulinemia) or decreasing AMPK activation (due to decreased adiponectin (4)) in various renewing epithelial cell populations at risk for transformation, these hormonal changes favor cell survival and proliferation over apoptosis. This increases the probability of survival of a clone bearing an oncogenic mutation, which in turn increases risk of subsequent ‘hits’ leading to full transformation.Recent population studies demonstrating these associations will be reviewed. Importantly, the effect of energy balance on cancer risk varies substantially with cancer type: for example, obesity is strongly associated with endometrial but not lung cancer, consistent with the view that optimizing metabolic risk factors may be insufficient to reduce cancer incidence in settings where carcinogen exposure is high. Furthermore, unexpected interactions between metabolic risk factors and preventio...
Source: Cancer Prevention Research - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Obesity, Metabolism, and Cancer: Oral Presentations - Invited Abstracts Source Type: research