INSPIRE Research Challenge

This priority area focuses on diet, physical activity, body composition, sleep, prehabilitation and other relevant supportive-care interventions delivered alongside conventional cancer treatment in childhood and adulthood. Research should determine which interventions work, for whom and at what stage of the cancer pathway, and how they can be incorporated safely and effectively into routine oncology care.

Studies should address outcomes that matter to patients and for clinical practice, including treatment tolerance and toxicity, quality of life, physical function, symptom control, recurrence and longer-term health. Applications on broadly or loosely defined complementary therapies that do not have a clear link to WCRF International’s remit or that lack a strong scientific rationale, are outside the intended scope of this priority area.

This priority area examines how diet, physical activity and behavioural support can be integrated with weight-loss medications, including GLP-1-related medicines across cancer prevention, treatment and survivorship. Research should address cancer-specific benefits and risks, including cancer incidence and relevant risk biomarkers, nutritional status, body composition and lean-mass preservation, physical function, treatment tolerance and effectiveness, quality of life, recurrence and survival.

Studies should consider the timing, duration and discontinuation of weight-loss medications, and seek to distinguish the effects of the medications themselves from those attributable to weight loss, metabolic improvements and lifestyle changes. Research should also examine whether effects vary by medication, cancer type, treatment stage or population characteristics, and consider inequalities in access and use where relevant.

This priority area seeks to explain the increasing incidence and prevalence of early-onset cancers to establish whether their modifiable risk factors and biology differ from cancers diagnosed later in life. This call considers cancers diagnosed in early adulthood, defined as 18-50 years old. Research may consider lifecourse exposures, including diet, body composition, physical activity and sleep, alongside tumour characteristics and relevant biological pathways.

This priority area investigates how modifiable exposures from preconception through pregnancy, infancy, childhood and adolescence influence cancer risk later in life (defined as adulthood, 18+ years). Research should define the exposure precisely and, where appropriate, define the approach/model being used within the study (for example, critical developmental window/sensitive period, accumulation, trajectory, pathway, social mobility or mixed model) and may consider maternal, paternal and intergenerational factors, diet, growth, body composition, physical activity, sleep and relevant ingested exposures.

The long interval between early-life exposure and cancer means that studies should use robust methods to address familial and socioeconomic confounding and, where possible, combine epidemiological evidence with biomarkers or mechanistic evidence.

This priority area investigates the role of ingested contaminants in food and drinking water in cancer prevention and survivorship. Relevant exposures may include endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants and micro- and nano-plastics, where there is a clear and evidence-based rationale for cancer relevance.

Research should consider cumulative exposure and mixtures, identify credible biological or causal pathways, and distinguish the effects of ingested contaminants from those of overall diet, occupation, air pollution and correlated social or geographical factors.

This priority area seeks to clarify whether and how ultra-processed food consumption influences cancer risk and survivorship. Research should move beyond associations based solely on broad ultra-processed food classification systems to identify whether specific  processing characteristics, additives, changes to food structure or related biological pathways may be causal.

Studies should address limitations in food classification and dietary assessment, account for changes in the food supply over time, and distinguish the effects of processing from those of energy intake, body composition, overall diet quality, the nutritional composition of individual foods and other relevant determinants of health.

Exposure data must reflect, or demonstrate clear relevance to, contemporary products and consumption patterns. Applications that do not adequately account for changes in food formulation, processing and consumption over time will not be considered.