Approved Research

Dissecting the association between metabolic features, social and behavioral factors, and cancers.

Lay summary

The development of cancers is influenced by complex environmental factors and difficult to achieve early diagnosis. Previous studies have found that lifestyle factors and metabolic disorders are closely related to the incidence and prognosis of various cancers. However, it remains unknown whether there is a real causal relationship between them. High-throughput NMR-based metabolic biomarker were measured in about 120,000 UK Biobank participants whereby circulating metabolic features can be highly represented. Besides, the genome-wide genotype data were collected on all individuals in the cohort, which provided high-quality instrument variables for causal analysis. The aim of this project is to investigate the association between metabolic features, social and behavioral factors, and cancers, to establish prediction models, as well as to improve strategies for screening, early diagnosis and precise intervention of cancers among high-risk population.