title: Obesity and Cancer: The Oil that Feeds the Flame.
abstract: Although discussion of the obesity epidemic had become a cocktail party cliché, its impact on public health cannot be dismissed. In the past decade, cancer had joined the list of chronic debilitating diseases whose risk is substantially increased by hypernutrition. Here we discuss recent advances in understanding how obesity increases cancer risk and propose a unifying hypothesis according to which the major tumor-promoting mechanism triggered by hypernutrition is the indolent inflammation that takes place at particular organ sites, including liver, pancreas, and gastrointestinal tract. The mechanisms by which excessive fat deposition feeds this tumor-promoting inflammatory flame are diverse and tissue specific.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Signal Transduction, Departments of Pharmacology and Pathology, Moores Cancer Center, UCSD School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA 92093-0723, USA.
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Font-Burgada
authors.affiliation: Liver Transplantation Center of the First Affiliated Hospital and Cancer Center, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, P.R. China. Electronic address: sunbc@njmu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Beicheng
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Signal Transduction, Departments of Pharmacology and Pathology, Moores Cancer Center, UCSD School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA 92093-0723, USA. Electronic address: karinoffice@ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Karin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002471:Cell Transformation, Neoplastic / Q000276:immunology; D004067:Digestive System Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology* / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation / Q000209:etiology / Q000378:metabolism; D018836:Inflammation Mediators / Q000502:physiology; D009765:Obesity / Q000150:complications* / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism; D009928:Organ Specificity; D012307:Risk Factors
chemical_list: D018836:Inflammation Mediators