The Cancer Prevention Laboratory
The Cancer Prevention Laboratory, is directed by Colorado State University Professor, Henry J. Thompson, Ph.D. The lab conducts both pre-clinical and clinical research, the goal of which is to identify practical solutions that will empower an individual to adapt lifestyles that achieve and maintain a lower risk for cancer.
In order to provide the necessary tools for health care professionals to define an individual’s risk for cancer, a major focus of the CPL’s research agenda focuses on development of surrogate endpoint biomarkers, i.e. oxidative damage markers, genomic signatures, proteomic profiles, and metabolic patterns of cell function that represent modifiable factors that can be used to monitor changes in cancer risk.
Because our food supply is a primary source of many chemicals that contribute to the interplay of forces that promote as well as prevent the development cancer, the CPL is part of the College of Agricultural Sciences. This permits cancer researchers to regularly interact with investigators responsible for decisions that impact the health characteristics of the foods ultimately made available to the consumer.The CPL judges that enhancement of the health benefits of the foods made available to consumers could have global impact on human health and well being.
The CPL’s other primary research focus is on weight control. There is a global epidemic in the occurrence of overweight and obesity. Failure to prevent adult weight gain predisposes populations to a host of chronic diseases including cancer. New solutions are required to combat this global epidemic and the CPL is actively engaged in research on energy metabolism and exercise that are intended to define new approaches to weight control for the 21st century.
Crops for Health
Origins
The ideas that gave birth to Crops For Health® program emerged from several resources as outlined below.
A number of recent large epidemiological studies have drawn into question the relative importance of plant food consumption in chronic disease prevention. We have dubbed the controversy created by these reports the plant food-disease prevention conundrum. In response to this conundrum, we formulated the working hypothesis that negative findings are due in part to the dissimilarities in the varieties of the same crop to which different populations around the world have access. Stated differently, we hypothesize that all varieties of a food crop are not created equal in their disease prevention attributes. CFH investigators seek to identify crop cultivars with disease prevention traits so that they can be understood genetically and chemically. This knowledge would then be used to improve the disease prevention attributes of the world’s food supply.
The best advice available regarding nutrition and health is to have a lot of variety in the diet and to eat in moderation. This advice prompts the question of how best to define and measure “variety”. For plants foods, the CFH hypothesis is that defining variety by botanical family will result in the consumption of the most beneficial mixture of bioactive food components. Defining the chemical nature of this mixture is one of the initiatives that led to the concepts underlying Crops for Health®.
Efforts to investigate topics related to the first two points revealed a surprising communications gap between those disciplines within agricultural sciences that bring food to the global table and the disciplines within biomedical and allied health sciences that focus on health promotion and disease prevention. This situation is ironic when it is recognized that great strides are being made in understanding of cellular processes and molecular mechanisms that account for life through comparative trans-organismal research spanning microbes, plants and animals. The road to bridge this communications gap is the cross disciplinary initiative that we have named Crops For Health® and the goal of this initiative is to create an environment in which the discovery process will lead to the innovations in crop improvement and disease prevention needed to reduce morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases on a global scale.
Program Goals
Global economic burden caused by prevalent chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer is enormous, approaching a trillion dollars per annum. The goal of the Crops For Health® (CFH) program is to meaningfully reduce the physical, psychosocial, and economic consequences of these diseases around the world. This will require participation by a broad-based community of individuals from all sectors of our global society. The specific objectives of CFH are:
- The identification, development and production of food crop varieties that show maximum potential to benefit human health while retaining adapted traits that make them profitable to grow and distribute in the global market place.
- The development of tools and techniques within the biomedical and allied health sciences that are required to understand how these food crops prevent chronic diseases.
- The dissemination of this knowledge to our global community using innovative translational public health approaches designed to effectively promote long-term lifestyle changes.
Participating Departments
Department of Agricultural Biology Department of Biology Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition Department of Health & Exercise Science Department of Horticulture Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
Participating Programs
Cancer Prevention Laboratory Cell and Molecular Biology Cancer Biology Plant Molecular Biology Interdisciplinary Studies Program Food Science / Safety