Researchers uncover potential way to protect against diet-induced obesity

Preventing cancer by targeting obesity

Almost 40% of all adults globally are overweight or obese, and most people now live within countries where being overweight or obese kills more people than being underweight. Obesity is well understood as one of the leading risk factors for cancer development, second only to smoking. In fact, it is estimated that up to half a million cancer cases per year around the world may be caused by obesity.

Very few therapeutic interventions are currently available that effectively treat obesity and lower a person’s associated risk of developing cancer. Therefore, better understanding of how obesity leads to further detrimental health effects is urgently needed.

The new research, led by Professor Raul Mendez and Professor Mercedes Fernandez, reveals a potential new therapeutic target, a protein called CPEB4, that plays a key role in how fatty tissue expands in diet-induced obesity.

These findings could have major implications for cancer as obesity and overweight increase the risk of a wide range of cancers. The researchers are now looking at which therapeutic approaches could be used to target CPEB4 in a clinical setting. Obesity is a major risk factor for liver cancer in particular, and so the researchers will also apply their findings to liver cancer as well as cachexia (‘wasting disease’) which accounts for one third of cancer deaths.