NEB’s primary goal is to understand the causal relations between nutrition, nutrition-related factors, and human cancer. Our research encompasses diet, energy balance/obesity/physical activity, specific nutrients and supplements, diet-related additives, contaminants, metabolites, and intermediate biologic markers.

Investigators in the NEB are able to carry out long-term, high-risk studies in collaboration with other government research units and extramural institutions to significantly advance our understanding of the relationship between nutrition and cancer. This gives us the ability to address problems in nutritional epidemiology and create new resources that can benefit both intramural and extramural investigators.

By building on the advances that have already been made and by further clarifying how nutrition and nutrition-related factors cause or help to cause cancer, our research could be used to make valuable public health recommendations, possibly helping to reduce cancer incidence and mortality.

NEB investigators plan and implement a variety of research projects that study specific nutritional questions, utilizing new high-throughput assays and other emerging technologies where appropriate. We have also developed nutritional study components to other, larger projects initiated by other organizations both internal and external to NCI. Examples include the Agricultural Health Study, PLCO, SEER-NCI Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Case-Control Study, Shanghai Women’s and Men’s Health Studies, Spanish Bladder Cancer Study, and PanScan. In addition, we respond to requests for scientific evidence from other offices of the NCI, the Department of Health and Human Services, or Congress.

Training and mentoring the next generation of scientists is a key component of NEB’s mission, and we provide research training for tenure-track investigators, post-doctoral fellows, doctoral students, masters and post-baccalaureate students, visiting fellows, and summer interns. During the past 10 years, NEB has trained 8 tenure-track investigators, 30 postdoctoral fellows, and 10 predoctoral fellows.

We currently focus on five major research programs within nutrition-related exposures and cancers. For each area, several major studies propel the current research, and one or more of the NEB Principal Investigators is an internationally recognized leader. In addition, we develop new instruments to assess diet, physical activity, and obesity.