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Diet, Microbiome, and Epigenetics in the Era of Precision Medicine

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Cancer Epigenetics for Precision Medicine

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1856))

Abstract

Precision medicine is a revolutionary approach to disease prevention and treatment that takes into account individual differences in lifestyle, environment, and biology. The US National Institutes of Health has recently launched The All of Us Research Program (2016) to extend precision medicine to all diseases by building a national research cohort of one million or more US participants. This review is limited to how the human microbiome factors into precision medicine from the applied aspect of preventing and managing cancer. The Precision Medicine Initiative was established in an effort to address particular characteristics of each person with the aim to increase the effectiveness of medical interventions in terms of prevention and treatment of multiple diseases including cancer. Many factors contribute to the response to an intervention. The microbiome and microbially produced metabolites are capable of epigenetic modulation of gene activity, and can influence the response through these mechanisms. The fact that diet has an impact on microbiome implies that it will also affect the epigenetic mechanisms involving microbiota. In this chapter, we review some major epigenetic mechanisms, notably DNA methylation, chromatin remodeling and histone modification, and noncoding RNA, implicated in cancer prevention and treatment. Several examples of how microbially produced metabolites from food influence cancer risk and treatment response through epigenetic mechanisms will be discussed. Some challenges include the limited understanding of how diet shapes the microbiome and how to best evaluate those changes since both, diet and the microbiota, exhibit daily and seasonal variations. Ongoing research seeks to understand the relationship between the human microbiome and multiple diseases including cancer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD, USA

    Gabriela Riscuta & Dudith Pierre-Victor

  2. Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD, USA

    Dan Xi

  3. Nutrition, Food Safety and Quality, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Beltsville, MD, USA

    Pamela Starke-Reed

  4. Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse and Co-occurring Infections Branch, National Institute of Drug Abuse, Rockville, MD, USA

    Jag Khalsa

  5. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Linda Duffy

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  1. Gabriela Riscuta
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  2. Dan Xi
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  3. Dudith Pierre-Victor
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  4. Pamela Starke-Reed
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  5. Jag Khalsa
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  6. Linda Duffy
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Correspondence to Gabriela Riscuta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kelly Government Solutions, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Ramona G. Dumitrescu

  2. Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Mukesh Verma

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Riscuta, G., Xi, D., Pierre-Victor, D., Starke-Reed, P., Khalsa, J., Duffy, L. (2018). Diet, Microbiome, and Epigenetics in the Era of Precision Medicine. In: Dumitrescu, R., Verma, M. (eds) Cancer Epigenetics for Precision Medicine . Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1856. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8751-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8751-1_8

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