Project

Impact of multi-mycotoxin exposure on kidney cancer risk: uniting a large-scale epidemiological design & next-generation sequencing coupled with public cancer genomic data mining

Code
3G062918
Duration
01 January 2018 → 31 December 2021
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
No data available
Keywords
mycotoxin kidney cancer
 
Project description

Mycotoxins are fungal toxins that frequently contaminate food & feed, and can contribute to a

diversity of adverse health effects in humans such as carcinogenicity and nephrotoxicity. The kidney

is a major target of mycotoxins. In addition, multiple mycotoxins can co-occur on one crop due to

multi-fungal contamination. Interactions between co-occurring mycotoxins can be additive or

synergistic. To date, there is no convincing epidemiological data on the effect of multi-mycotoxin

exposures on human kidney cancer (KC), and evidence from mechanistic studies is limited. This

project proposal combines a high-quality large-scale epidemiological design with an innovative

mechanistic arm using established in vitro & in vivo exposure systems, and next-generation

sequencing coupled with public cancer genomic data mining. Objectives are to (1) investigate

associations between estimated dietary mycotoxin exposures and KC risk, using data from the full

European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort (n=521,448) and

mycotoxin occurrence data from EFSA; (2) measure mycotoxin biomarkers in plasma samples using

UHPLC-MS/MS of a KC case-control study nested in EPIC (n=556 pairs) to investigate pathways of

mycotoxin exposures and their association with KC risk; and (3) experimentally determine genomewide

mutation spectra, extracted from public human cancer genomics data, associated with

exposure to putatively carcinogenic mycotoxins OTA, FB1 & DON.