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Chrono-Cuisine: Investigating Meal Timing Patterns and Cancer Susceptibility

Award Number: R21CA299749
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 06/01/2026
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 05/31/2028

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Chrono-Cuisine: Investigating Meal Timing Patterns and Cancer Susceptibility - SUMMARY. Regulating the timing of meals and snacks to re-align the body’s circadian clock and improve metabolic health is emerging as a promising approach for cancer prevention in early animal and small clinical studies. Yet, a major barrier to studying meal timing and cancer is that large population studies rarely measure meal timing, which makes it impossible to conduct epidemiological studies of meal timing and cancer risk on a large-scale and across individuals with different biological and environmental characteristics and varied meal timing practices. Although obesity and its related metabolic dysregulation are important risk factors for at least 13 cancer types, weight management is notoriously difficult in the long-term. Behavioral strategies are needed that can improve metabolic risk factors for cancer but that do not necessarily rely on weight loss. Herein, we propose to discover and then externally validate novel objective biomarkers of meal timing practices, then test their relationship with incidence of breast (BC), endometrial (EC), and colorectal (CRC) cancers, three of the most prevalent obesity-linked cancers. Our central hypothesis is that meal timing is associated with perturbations in blood metabolomic profile, and with obesity-related cancer incidence in free-living humans. We will test our hypothesis with unique data from large-scale cohorts with validated measures of meal timing and sleep and longitudinal metabolomics data measured on the same metabolomics platform to facilitate data harmonization. In Aim 1, we will Identify biomarkers of meal timing patterns using a discovery and external validation design in the Cancer Prevention Study 3 Diet Assessment Sub-study (DAS) (n=750) and the Interactive Diet and Activity Tracking in AARP (IDATA) Study (n=718) and measure their association with risk of obesity-related cancer in the Cancer Prevention Study 2 (CPS-2, 782 BC matched sets; 517 CRC matched sets with 16-year follow-up time) and CPS-3 cohorts (1695 BC patients, 1983 controls, 3-year follow-up). In Aim 2, we will examine whether there is large-scale, real-world evidence that meal timing patterns are associated with obesity-related cancer risk among 185,000 US adults in the CPS-3 cohort. The proposed study will answer critical, outstanding questions about which meal timing practices are associated with cancer- relevant metabolic factors and risk of obesity-related cancers in a real-world scenario and identify objective biomarkers of meal timing behaviors that will facilitate large-scale investigations of meal timing and cancer risk at the population level. These meal timing biomarkers could also be used to assess response to meal timing interventions in clinical studies. Following successful completion of this project, we plan to apply the resulting biomarker profiles to study meal timing and cancer risk across international cohorts in the Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS). Epidemiological research stemming from our study findings will be vitally important prior to issuing public health guidance on meal timing for cancer prevention.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $395,973 )
2026	2026	UNIVERSITY OF UTAH	201 PRESIDENTS CIR	SALT LAKE CITY	UT	84112	SALT LAKE	USA	Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research	000	1	5/19/2026	NEW	$395,973
														Subtotal = $395,973

Grand Total All Awards = $395,973

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Chrono-Cuisine: Investigating Meal Timing Patterns and Cancer Susceptibility

Award Number: R21CA299749

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 06/01/2026

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 05/31/2028

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