Scientists have studied many foods, nutrients, vitamins, and various types of diets for their links to cancer. Diets high in processed meat or saturated fats, for example, have been associated with increased risk for many types of cancer, while increased consumption of non-starchy vegetables, whole fruits, and fiber may lower cancer risk. As the National Cancer Institute points out, however, these studies only show that diet is associated with a change in cancer risk, not that any specific food or nutrient is directly responsible for that change.
Metabolomics is the field of biomedical research that studies metabolites produced by cells, including amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and more. Over the past several decades, researchers at the University of Chicago and elsewhere have begun to grasp how much characterizing metabolites and measuring their levels can tell us about how biological systems respond to genetic differences, environment, or disease, including cancer. Many of these metabolites originally come from diet—they are the downstream byproducts of the foods we eat as our cells consume and process them for all sorts of activities.
Jing Chen, PhD, the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, focuses on metabolomics in the context of cancer. Cancer cells produce and consume metabolites just like any other cells, but often in strange ways because they need increased energy to grow quickly. For example, normal cells use oxygen to turn food into energy through a process called oxidative phosphorylation. But cancer cells prefer to fuel their growth through glycolysis, a process that involves consuming and breaking down glucose for energy. This phenomenon, called “the Warburg effect,” is involved in virtually all cancers, so unraveling its mechanisms could have broad implications for understanding the links between metabolic processes and cancer.