Journal of Nutritional Oncology

Great News on Nutritional Oncology

Cancer remains the leading cause of death worldwide. With the advances made in basic cancer research and clinical oncology, there are five major therapies for most cancers in the clinic, namely surgery, cytotoxic chemotherapy, radiotherapy, precision therapy and immunotherapy. Although there is a trend of declining incidence and mortality for some of the common cancers (e.g., prostate, breast, lung, and colon cancers) in developed countries, cancer still poses a major threat to public health and socio-economic development, especially in developing countries. Therefore, there is an urgent need for developing comprehensive, effective, and safe approaches to improve the outcome of clinical management of patients with cancer. Recognizing that there are limited options in our toolbox for fighting with cancer, academic researchers and clinicians are searching for new strategies for establishing foundation of personalized cancer medicine, in which nutritional intervention is becoming a rising star.

There is a long history of using nutritional remedy and natural medicines for the treatment of human diseases, including cancer and other chronic diseases. Nutrients are broadly regarded as molecules and minerals that produce beneficial effects in the body under normal physiological and/or pathological conditions. Nutrients are typically taken from foods and dietary supplements with various natural sources such as plants, animals, microbes, and marine organisms. Over the last several decades, thanks to endless efforts of basic and clinical researchers, nutritional intervention has been becoming a mainstay in clinical patient care. Various approaches to internal and external gastrointestinal nutrition support have been optimized through improved mechanistic and functional investigations using evolutionary modern technologies in nutrition and food sciences, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and genomics, pharmacology, toxicology, biopharmaceutics, and biotechnology. Considering the diverse chemical features of nutrients, and natural products in food, dietary supplements, and medical diets, it is not surprising that nutritional intervention have a broad spectrum of health effects and impacts on pathophysiology and disease progression and prognosis, with multiple molecular targets, including various biological macromolecules (i.e., DNA, RNA and proteins) and pathways.

As for other human diseases, the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and treatment has been increasingly recognized by the healthcare professionals, patients and the public. It is recently suggested that nutritional therapy may become first-line therapy that should be integrated into comprehensive, systematic management plan for patients with cancer and adjusted to meet individual needs during treatment. Nutritional intervention should be considered as a critical component in personalized medicine. In the post-genome era, advances in pharmacogenomics and metabolomics have emphasized the need for identifying novel molecular targets and more biomarkers for personalized cancer prevention and treatment. With the rapid development in next-generation sequencing and genomic medicine in recent years, a large number of genetic alterations in cancers have been identified and will continue to be discovered to reveal the complex interaction between gene and environments, including nutrition and gene interaction. This provides numerous opportunities for the development of targeted nutritional therapy and the use of molecular diagnostics in stratifying cancer patients into subgroups for better clinical trials of targeted therapies or precision therapy. Therefore, in this coming era of personalized medicine, the novel conceptual framework and state-of-the-art technologies available to researchers and clinicians will benefit future development of nutritional therapy to continue to define the vital position of nutritional therapy in future cancer medicine.

We have been long interested in establishing nutritional oncology as new science bridging nutrition and oncology and to facilitate the translation of recent progress made in bench research in nutrition and cancer biology to bedside patient care in clinical oncology. With the launching of the inaugural issue of a newly established academic journal, Journal of Nutritional Oncology (JNO), we hope to provide an international platform to academic researcher and clinicians who have an interest in nutritional oncological sciences for an open, interactive and comprehensive exchange in information on basic, clinical and translational research and development in the fields related to nutritional intervention for cancer prevention and therapy.

As an official journal of the International Society for Cancer Metabolism and Nutrition (ISCMN), JNO is an international, open-access, peer reviewed academic journal that aims to highlight latest development in basic, clinical, and translation researches in the fields of cancer metabolism, nutrition, and nutritional intervention. JNO is published quarterly and will consider original articles and timely reviews in all nutrition-related cancer research fields, including carcinogenesis, cancer prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and home-care researches, covering various disciplines, such as epidemiology, endocrinology, cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, microbiology, genetics, energetics, pharmacology, and toxicology, to address key issues related to oncological sciences, such as human nutrition, diet, nutrients, inflammation, metabolism, aging, nutritional disorders, cachexia, sarcopenia, healthcare, and public health policy. JNO accepts original researches, reviews, case reports, commentaries, book reviews, perspectives, and short communications.

As the founding Editor-in-Chief, I have been fortunate to have a distinguished editorial board composed of leading scientists, researchers, clinicians and dietitians from around the world. Some of them have made excellent contributions to this inaugural issue of JNO. Together with the publisher and ISCMN, JNO adheres to the highest standards of scientific publishing, including rigorous peer review and timely high-quality publication, and is committed to obtaining citation recognition/indexing for the journal as soon as possible to enhance its impact on oncological sciences and on patient care and public health as well.

On behalf of the Editorial Board of JNO, I cordially invite all the qualified authors to submit your latest discovery for consideration of publication in our journal. I strongly believe that, by publishing in JNO, your research will be able to rapidly expand your findings in scientific community and in public arena, impacting clinical practice and patient care and public health on a global scale.

In this inaugural issue of JNO, seven review articles, two original research papers, and one case report cover a variety of critical research topics in the field of nutritional oncology, ranging from tumor metabolism, microenvironment, signal transduction pathways, genetics and epigenetics, nutrients, dietary supplements, clinical trials, nutrition survey, clinical nutritional therapy, and clinical case management, and translational pharmacology. Considering the wide diversity of chemical structures in nutritional components and complexity of internal and external environments, the interactions between nutritional factors and their molecular and cellular targets during the long-term selection process of natural evolution, it is conceivable that nutritional therapy will continue to serve as a stepping stone or inspiration or first-line therapy for discovery and development of precision cancer medicine in the future. We also believe that the future of nutritional intervention will involve use of advanced cutting-edge knowledge, evolving and timely information, and state-of-the-art technologies in a complementary manner to maximize benefits for the patients and the community in general.

The publication of this journal would not be possible without the outstanding contributions of our authors, the rigorous reviews from our peer reviewers, the strong support of our sponsors, and the endless hard work of our editorial board and editorial staffs. I thank them for long-standing support and look forward to working with all the authors, reviewers, editors and staffs to improve this journal and to bring the best science possible to our readers and the public.

• Han Ping Shi, MD, PhD, FACS
• Editor-in-Chief
• Journal of Nutritional Oncology