Cambridge Centre for Nutritional Epidemiology in Cancer Prevention and Survival (CCNC)

The mission of CNC is to provide a more specific basis for intervention studies, public health advice and clinical guidance on treatment concerning diet and cancer. CNC will aim to interest and inform the general public of developments and ensure that its findings are incorporated into advice available to doctors, government agencies and charities. Consistent advice will enable the consumer to change dietary habits in order to avoid the risk of cancer.

Using mature cohorts, the proposed Centre firstly will bring together six UK cohorts that have collected information on healthy people consuming their usual diet to form a unique UK cohort consortium of approximately 100,000 participants using diary methodology that has previously not thought to be feasible in cancer epidemiology, but which is known to be more likely to measure the true magnitude of the effects of approximately 100 different items of diet implicated in cancer prevention. Nested case control studies of at least 1,000 cases and 4,000 controls at each site of breast, bowel and prostate cancer will be conducted. In a second mature cohort of 500,000 participants EPIC (European Prospective Investigation of Cancer), CCNC will develop major research programmes on the role that nutrition, genetic predisposition and other interactions play in cancer aetiology. The techniques developed in these sectors will be transferred to epidemiological studies of other diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Another aspect of the proposed CCNC is to put in place techniques for future studies of survival and intervention in cancer. In a prospective study of patients recruited to the SEARCH (Studies of Epidemiology And Risk Factors in Cancer Heredity) study of cancer genetics, participants will be asked to complete food diaries in order that in 5 years time, nutritional factors concerned in cancer survival and prognosis can be assessed. This will allow nutritional advice to patients that is more specific according to molecular diagnosis to be developed. In a fourth sector, new risk marker profiles for identifying patients at high risk of developing cancer will be developed to allow future dietary intervention studies in cancer to become more efficient.