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Nutritional Metabolomics in Cancer Epidemiology: Current Trends, Challenges, and Future Directions

  • Cancer (MF Leitzmann, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Nutrition Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 13 June 2019

This article has been updated

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Metabolomics offers several opportunities for advancement in nutritional cancer epidemiology; however, numerous research gaps and challenges remain. This narrative review summarizes current research, challenges, and future directions for epidemiologic studies of nutritional metabolomics and cancer.

Recent Findings

Although many studies have used metabolomics to investigate either dietary exposures or cancer, few studies have explicitly investigated diet-cancer relationships using metabolomics. Most studies have been relatively small (≤ ~ 250 cases) or have assessed a limited number of nutritional metabolites (e.g., coffee or alcohol-related metabolites).

Summary

Nutritional metabolomic investigations of cancer face several challenges in study design; biospecimen selection, handling, and processing; diet and metabolite measurement; statistical analyses; and data sharing and synthesis. More metabolomics studies linking dietary exposures to cancer risk, prognosis, and survival are needed, as are biomarker validation studies, longitudinal analyses, and methodological studies. Despite the remaining challenges, metabolomics offers a promising avenue for future dietary cancer research.

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Change history

  • 13 June 2019

    The original version of this article was revised: “The article was published with errors on text as the author's corrections were misinterpreted.”

Abbreviations

COMETS:

Consortium of METabolomics Studies

FoodBAll:

Food Biomarkers Alliance

GC-MS:

Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

LC-MS:

Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry

NMR:

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Emma E. McGee & A. Heather Eliassen

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Emma E. McGee & A. Heather Eliassen

  3. Division of Cancer Population Sciences, Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Rama Kiblawi & Mary C. Playdon

  4. Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Mary C. Playdon

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McGee, E.E., Kiblawi, R., Playdon, M.C. et al. Nutritional Metabolomics in Cancer Epidemiology: Current Trends, Challenges, and Future Directions. Curr Nutr Rep 8, 187–201 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-019-00279-z

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