Association of Colorectal Cancer With Nutrition, Diet, Obesity, Diabetes Mellitus, and Genetic Alterations in Taiwan

We will explore the genetic (including APC, k-ras, p53, MSI, etc.) and environmental (including family history, life style, diet, nutritional status, DM, serum IGF-I, IGFBP-3, etc.) risk factors of colorectal tumorigenesis. We will accrue approximately 1000 patients as experimental group. The control group consists of 2000 individuals who were confirmed without colorectal cancer or polyps by colonoscopy. We estimated the statistical power of this study will reach more than 90%. In the second year, we will explore the association between various environmental risk factors with the epigenetic changes of various oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Firstly, we will study the correlation between hypermethylation of promoter region of hMLH1 gene with various environmental factors. Next, we will explore the genetic polymorphisms of promoter of E-cadherin gene. Recently, it has been reported that the C→A genetic polymorphism in the promoter region of E-cadherin gene in prostate cancer. Since this phenomenon has not been reported in colorectal cancer, it is mandatory for us to extend our research to the E-cadherin polymorphisms of colorectal cancer. Moreover, this project will focus on exploration of the association between the genetic polymorphisms of promoter of TS gene with chemosensitivity to 5-Fu-based therapy. We speculated that the better prognosis in colorectal tumors with MSI is related to their expression of TS gene. In summary, the second year of this project will extend our accumulated experience in the study of genetic polymorphisms to further clarify the association between genetic polymorphisms of TS gene with the prognosis of colorectal cancers after chemotherapy. We believe that this project will facilitate: (1) the further clarification of colorectal cancer tumorigenesis; (2) the establishment of domestic epidemiological data of colorectal cancer of Taiwan, and (3) the improvement of the quality of clinical management of patients with colorectal cancer.