University of Oklahoma Wins Grant to Study High-Fat Diets in Pancreatic Cancer

University of Oklahoma researchers have received a five-year, $2.6 million National Cancer Institute grant to investigate how high-fat diets may promote pancreatic cancer progression. The team, led by Kamiya Mehla, will study how dietary fats affect cancer-cell metabolism and weaken anti-tumor immune responses. Preliminary mouse experiments found that animals fed a lard-based high-fat diet developed more aggressive tumors than mice eating a lower-fat diet with the same number of calories. Researchers are also examining how tumor cells prompt nearby immune cells to absorb fat and whether changes in immune cells such as granulocytes help tumors evade the body’s defenses.