Translation of nutrigenomic research for personalised and precision nutrition for cancer prevention and for cancer survivors

Personalised and precision nutrition uses information on individual characteristics and responses to nutrients, foods and dietary patterns to develop targeted nutritional advice that is more effective in improving the diet and health of each individual. Moving away from the conventional 'one size fits all', such targeted intervention approaches may pave the way to better population health, including lower burden of non-communicable diseases. To date, most personalised and precision nutrition approaches have been focussed on tackling obesity and cardiometabolic diseases with limited efforts directed to cancer prevention and for cancer survivors. Advances in understanding the biological basis of cancer and of the role played by diet in cancer prevention and in survival after cancer diagnosis, mean that it is timely to test and to apply such personalised and precision nutrition approaches in the cancer area. This endeavour can take advantage of the enhanced understanding of interactions between dietary factors, individual genotype and the gut microbiome that impact on risk of, and survival after, cancer diagnosis. Translation of these basic research into public health action should include realtime acquisition of nutrigenomic and related data and use of AI-based data integration methods in systems approaches that can be scaled up using mobile devices.

Automated summary

Personalised and precision nutrition uses individual characteristics and responses to nutrients, foods, and dietary patterns to develop targeted nutritional advice for improving health. This approach is moving away from the 'one size fits all' model and may have potential for better population health and disease prevention. While most efforts have focused on obesity and cardiovascular diseases, there is a need to apply personalised and precision nutrition approaches in cancer prevention and for cancer survivors, taking advantage of the understanding of dietary factors, genetics, and the microbiome.