Food & Nutrition Towards a Cancer Free World

In April of 2024, a group of more than 80 researchers, professionals, and students gathered on the Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory at The Ohio State University to discuss the future of research across diet, nutrition, and cancer. The meeting was facilitated by the campus-wide Foods for Health Research Initiative (FFH) in collaboration with the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) and OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center (OSUCCC).

The American Cancer Society estimates that almost one fifth of cancer cases in the United States can be prevented by modifiable lifestyle factors, including diet. Emerging evidence suggests that the foods we eat can also impact important aspects of cancer care and survivorship. The “why” and “how” of all this is an active area of research at Ohio State.

Dr. Martha Belury is a nutrition researcher and Chair of the Department of Food Science and Technology at Ohio State.  “Our food supply is changing rapidly,” says Belury, “so we have to know what is in our food that is going to impact our risk for cancer, and our ability to withstand cancer treatment, and hopefully survive from the disease.”

Ohio State is one of only a few institutions in the country with a National Institutes of Health-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, college of medicine, and college of agriculture physically co-located on one campus. This geographic proximity allows researchers to easily collaborate on complex projects and gather for cross-disciplinary meetings.

Professor of Internal Medicine and co-leader of the OSUCCC Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program, Dr. Steve Clinton, knows the value of collaborative meetings like this.  “[We] brought together investigators that have an interest in one aspect or another of cancer research.” He continued, “I think at OSU we have tremendous potential to make impactful discovery and research that is translated into human care.”

To keep the conversations going after the April meeting, FFH partnered with CFAES and OSUCCC on a seed grant competition that required collaborations between researchers in each unit. “We need to think about this not from a discipline point of view but more as a systems approach,” said Dr. Devin Peterson, Distinguished Professor of Food Science and Faculty Director of FFH.  

FFH recently announced the three winning projects that will be funded at a total of $200,000. One of the winning projects, led by Drs. Zobeida Cruz-Monserrate, Kristy Townsend (College of Medicine), and Jessica Cooperstone (CFAES), will investigate how steroidal alkaloids, compounds naturally found in tomatoes, may impact processes related to obesity-associated pancreatic cancer. “We are excited to get this project started and foster this unique and new collaboration which would have been hard to start otherwise,” said Dr. Cruz-Monserrate. Another winning project will investigate how naringenin, a compound commonly associated with grapefruit, may impact brain inflammation. The third funded project will evaluate how whole grains and the microbiome may work together to prevent colorectal cancer.

These projects represent a renewed focus on interdisciplinary research that defines the capacity of foods to impact cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship. Dr. Gary Pierzynski, CFAES Associate Dean for Research, puts it well, “Ohio state is one of the most comprehensive land grant universities in the country. We take the entire spectrum of basic to applied research and use it to solve real world problems.”

Read more about FFH funded and co-funded research by clicking this link.