Scientists believe that blockbuster weight loss jabs, such as Ozempic and Mounjaro, could be crucial for turning the tide on increasing colorectal cancers in young people.
Experts will conduct pioneering trials to test the theory that injections may be able to prevent changes to bacteria in the gut that are thought to precede cancers in those with a high risk of the disease.
Over the past two decades cancer cases have been rising twice as fast in under-50s as they are in those aged over 75, leaving scientists and doctors baffled.
Most recently, 90s heartthrob and Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek announced he’d been diagnosed with colorectal cancer at the age of just 47.
The rise is mysterious, but experts suspect ultra-processed foods, pollution and the over use of antibiotics could be driving microscopic cancer-causing changes in the body’s cells.
Now, a team of scientists across five nations, including at King’s College London, have been given £20 million by charities including Cancer Research UK to fund fresh studies that will begin early next year, The Times reported.
Led by Professor Andrew Chan based at Harvard University, experts in the US will run clinical trials that involve giving patients with a history of polyps (growths that can develop into cancer) semaglutide drugs such as, Ozempic and Mounjaro, to see if this drives down early onset tumours.
Previous studies have shown how the fat melting jabs could ward off up to 10 types of cancer including pancreatic, kidney and ovarian.
Actor James Van Der Beek took to social media on Sunday afternoon to reveal he’s been diagnosed with cancer
Funding has come from Cancer Research UK and the Bowelbabe Fund, which was set up by the BBC presenter Dame Deborah James before she died of bowel cancer in 2022 at the age of 40, after being diagnosed aged just 35
American scientists, who carried out a previous trial published in the journal JAMA Network Open, said their findings show the ‘potential benefits’ of the drugs in people at higher risk of these diseases.
Researchers are not yet sure exactly why the drugs, which belong to class of medications called GLP-1 agonists that stop you feeling hungry, might lower a patient’s chances of cancer.
However, some experts believe they could help to encourage the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut, and prevent the prosperation of those linked to colon cancers.
‘We know that GLP-1, the active ingredient in weight loss drugs, can help to reduce gut inflammation as well as ward off harmful bacteria that have been linked to cancers,’ Professor Sarah Berry, a lecturer in nutritional sciences at King’s College London told MailOnline.
A theory that has been explored at length is that the rise in young cancers is triggered by a concurrent increase in the UK’s waistline.
Since the early 90s, the proportion of adults in England who are overweight or obese has risen from 52.9 per cent to 64.3 per cent, and the proportion who are obese has almost doubled, rising from 14.9 per cent to 28.0 per cent, NHS figures show.
Being obese and having a higher fat mass is known to put you at a higher risk of colorectal cancer as well as 12 other types of cancer.
Having too much body fat causes the level of growth hormones in the body to rise, which then causes cells to divide more often, Cancer Research UK explains.
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Each of these additional divisions represents another potential chance for cancer cells to appear, increasing the odds of getting the disease.
Another factor increasing risk is that immune cells are attracted to areas of the body where there are lots of fat cells.
This can then cause an inflammation spike in these areas which causes cells to divide quicker, again increasing the risk of disease.
A 2023 study, published in JAMA Oncology, found that people who took the weight-loss jabs had an 44 per cent lower risk of getting colorectal cancer compared to diabetics treated with insulin.
However, the authors believed the weight loss effect only partially explained the reduced cancer risk, as even those who were not obese saw their colon cancer risk slashed.
Professor Berry is also set to use the £20million charity fund to research how changes to our diets can impact the gut microbiome.
She has previously found that different species of gut bacteria produce different chemicals — some of which may instigate changes in cells in the gut and cause cancer.
To put this theory to the test she will be setting up a trial using identical twin volunteers from Twins UK, a registry of 15,000 twins based at King’s.
One twin from each pair will be given dietary advice with the aim of cutting the risk of bowel cancer, this may include cutting down on red meat and increasing fibre intake. The other twin will be told to simply eat as normal.
Their microbiomes will be monitored and compared for changes in chemicals and bacteria that’s thought to cause cancer.
Professor Berry will also be on the lookout for thousands of volunteers for another experiment which is also set to test if diet tweaks can prevent changes in the microbiome that have been linked to cancer.
The projects, led by Dr Yin Cao, a cancer epidemiologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and Professor Andrew Chan, a cancer specialist based at Harvard, will see experts from the UK, US, India, France and Italy work together.
‘In the US if you compare those born in 1990 with those born in 1950, at the same age, those who were born in 1990 have twice the risk of colon cancer and four times the risk of rectal cancer,’ Dr Cao said. She added that the data is similar for the UK.
Incidences of the bowel cancer, which kills 17,000 per year in the UK, have risen by 22 per cent in the under 50s over the course of the last 30 years.
The new collection of studies, called Prospect, will look at data from ten million people around the world, looking for links between their environment, upbringing and lifestyle and their risk of cancer.
Everything from pollution levels, the amount of green spaces near a person home and even caesarean section rates will be analysed to reveal new carcinogens — substances that can cause cancer.
In addition to human trials researchers will also introduce risk factors such as pollutants into animals in a lab to see if they go on to develop cancer.
