Innovations Teams
Sustainable Lifestyle and Cancer Team (SLC)

Starting date: January 2021

Work Programme

The overall goal of the Sustainable Lifestyle and Cancer Team (SLC) is to conduct research on lifestyle factors, including nutrition, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, sleep, and stress, and to investigate their role in cancer development while also considering their environmental impact, often called “co-benefits”.

SLC will develop and share innovative methods and sustainable evidence-based lifestyle interventions that will help researchers to support communities with tailored lifestyle assessment tools and sustainable behaviour change strategies for cancer prevention. This programme will be achieved via three integrated objectives:

1. enhancing existing databases of epidemiological studies with innovative indicators of lifestyle behaviours, including food biodiversity, food processing, meal timing, circadian rhythm, sleep, and stress, and their environmental impact indicators (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions);
2. designing observational studies, with cohort and case–control designs, in high-, middle-, and low-income settings characterized by lifestyle transitions; and
3. developing sustainable interventions on lifestyle behaviour change, and evaluating their efficacy for cancer prevention (e.g. the LIFE-SCREEN intervention, as part of the colorectal cancer screening programme in France).

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All lifestyle behaviour indicators and tools are being evaluated in pilot studies and/or validation studies where reference methods and/or exposure biomarkers are applied. These validation studies are set up in close collaboration with other NME Teams. SLC also collaborates closely with Laboratory Support, Biobanking, and Services (LSB) in setting up new cohort studies, among which is the IARC–International Initiative for Pediatrics and Nutrition (IIPAN) programme on nutrition and childhood cancer. This IARC-IIPAN initiative aims to develop a large informative biobank and database to investigate the deeper etiological pathways that connect nutritional status and lifestyle factors with clinical outcomes in children and adolescents with cancer.

Team Composition

Team Leader: Dr Inge Huybrechts, Nutrition and Metabolism Branch (NME), IARC
Email: HuybrechtsI@iarc.who.int

Team members:
Dr Agnès Fournier (Visiting Scientist, NME; INSERM CESP)
Dr Aline Al Nahas (Postdoctoral Scientist, NME)
Ms Bernadette Chimera (Doctoral Student, NME)
Ms Elodie Faure (Visiting Scientist, NME; INSERM CESP)
Dr Esther Gonzalez Gil (Visiting Scientist, NME)
Ms Genevieve Nicolas (Data Manager, NME)
Dr Inarie Jacobs (Postdoctoral Scientist, NME)
Mr Jeroen Berden (Doctoral Student, NME)
Dr Jessica Blanco Lopez (Postdoctoral Scientist, NME)
Ms Karine Racinoux (Project Assistant, NME)
Dr Mohamed Khalis (Visiting Scientist, NME; Mohammed VI University of Health Sciences, Casablanca, Morocco)
Dr Nathalie Kliemann (Postdoctoral Scientist, Collaborator from Brazil)
Dr Sahar Ghantous (Postdoctoral Scientist, INSERM CESP)
Dr Shiny M. Lizia (Postdoctoral Scientist, NME)
Ms Tracy Wootton (Project Assistant, NME/LSB)

Key networks: European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), International Initiative for Pediatrics and Nutrition (IIPAN), Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence (HELENA), Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health Effects in Children and Infants (IDEFICS), UK Biobank (UKB), Determinants of Breast Cancer in Morocco (EDSMAR)

Key funding: Institut national du Cancer (INCa), World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail (ANSES), Agence nationale de la Recherche (ANR), International Initiative for Pediatrics and Nutrition (IIPAN), Cancer Research UK (CRUK), European Commission (EC)

Key publications

1. Jacobs I, Taljaard-Krugell C, Wicks M, Cubasch H, Joffe M, Laubscher R, et al. (2021). Dietary patterns and breast cancer risk in black urban South African women: the SABC study. Nutrients. 13(11):4106. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13114106 PMID:34836361
2. Huybrechts I, Kliemann N, Perol O, Cattey-Javouhey A, Benech N, Maire A, et al. (2021). Feasibility study to assess the impact of a lifestyle intervention during colorectal cancer screening in France. Nutrients. 13(11):3685. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13113685 PMID:34835941
3. Khalis M, Elbadisy I, Bouaddi O, Luo A, Bendriouich A, Addahri B, et al. (2024). Cluster analysis of cancer knowledge, attitudes and behaviors in the Moroccan population. BMC Cancer. 24(1):669. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-024-12226-5 PMID:38824496
4. Mohan A, Huybrechts I, Michels N (2022). Psychosocial stress and cancer risk: a narrative review. Eur J Cancer Prev. 31(6):585–99. https://doi.org/10.1097/CEJ.0000000000000752 PMID:35352705
5. Huybrechts I, Chimera B, Hanley-Cook GT, Biessy C, Deschasaux-Tanguy M, Touvier M, et al. (2024). Food biodiversity and gastrointestinal cancer risk in nine European countries: analysis within a prospective cohort study. Eur J Cancer. 210:114258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2024.114258 PMID:39168001
6. Kliemann N, Rauber F, Bertazzi Levy R, Viallon V, Vamos EP, Cordova R, et al. (2023). Food processing and cancer risk in Europe: results from the prospective EPIC cohort study. Lancet Planet Health. 7(3):e219–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00021-9 PMID:36889863
7. Huybrechts I, Jacobs I, Biessy C, Aglago EK, Jenab M, Claeys L, et al. (2024). Associations between dietary mycotoxins exposures and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in a European cohort. PLoS One. 19(12):e0315561. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315561 PMID:39680546
8. Vineis P, Huybrechts I, Millett C, Weiderpass E (2021). Climate change and cancer: converging policies. Mol Oncol. 15(3):764–9. https://doi.org/10.1002/1878-0261.12781 PMID:32964631
9. Huybrechts I, Zouiouich S, Loobuyck A, Vandenbulcke Z, Vogtmann E, Pisanu S, et al. (2020). The human microbiome in relation to cancer risk: a systematic review of epidemiologic studies. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 29(10):1856–68. https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-20-0288 PMID:32727720
10. Mint Sidi Ould Deoula M, Huybrechts I, El Kinany K, Boudouaya H, Hatime Z, El Asri A, et al. (2020). Behavioral, nutritional, and genetic risk factors of colorectal cancers in Morocco: protocol for a multicenter case-control study. JMIR Res Protoc. 9(1):e13998. https://doi.org/10.2196/13998 PMID:31929106