Study to Focus on Connection Between Cancer and Obesity

Researchers have proposed a long time ago that obesity and cancer are somewhat related, in the sense that the presence of one in the body can favor the development of the other. A team of experts was just awarded an important grant to study this possible correlation.

The money, a total of $9.2 million, were provided by the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) to scientists at the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL) School of Medicine (WUSM).

Researchers at the university plan to use these funds to support the Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (TREC) Center. The grant covers a period of five years, during which time the team needs to prove either that the correlation exists or that it doesn't.

Obesity, poor diet and low levels of physical activity are known risk factors that lead to the development of cancer. Experts want to study all of them in detail, and then maybe create new measures and therapies aimed at preventing these factors from actually triggering the disease.

“The emphasis is to bring together people from many disciplines, from both the Danforth Campus and the School of Medicine, to investigate the link between obesity and cancer,” epidemiologist Graham A. Colditz, MD, PhD, explains.

“Our projects span from looking at cancer risk in animal models to studies of how workplace policies can influence sedentary behavior and cancer risk,” the expert goes on to say. He is the Niess-Gain Professor at WUSM.

The expert is also the associate director of prevention and control at the WUSL Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, which the university operated in collaboration with the Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

“We want to link basic scientists with clinicians helping patients,” Sarah J. Gehlert, PhD, adds. She is the E. Desmond Lee professor of racial and ethnic diversity at the Brown School and the School of Medicine. The expert is also a co-principal investigator at the TREC Center.

“If we can sit down in the same room, we can shape research projects that are more likely to result in a meaningful outcome, such as better treatments based on what we know from the basic science,” she goes on to explain.

WUSL's is not the only TREC Center. The NCI funds three other such endeavors, at the Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California in San Diego (UCSD).

A fifth installation, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, is used as a coordination hub. Its role is to centralize data and to facilitate cooperation between the other four centers. The NCI is providing a total of $45 million for studying the link between cancer and obesity.