High-fat diets may spur cancer by activating tumor-prone stem cells

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Chowing down on a high-fat diet may not only grow your waistline. It may also plump stem cell populations in your gut—cells that are prone to producing tumors.

After about a year of feeding mice a diet of 60 percent fat, researchers found that the rodents had an unusually hefty population of cancer-susceptible intestinal stem cells and cells that act like stem cells. Those cells were supercharged by a protein called PPAR-δ, which can be switched on by the presence of fatty acids in the gut, the researchers reported.

The findings, published in Nature, may explain why epidemiological data in humans has repeatedly linked obesity to boosted risks of cancer, particularly colon cancer. And, it may offer researchers a new target for knocking back the risks of cancer in the obese.