We recently reached out to some of the DIOPTRA partners who are leading various activities to gain their perspectives on the project’s mission from their areas of expertise. This resulted in a series of video interviews that will be available on our website and official YouTube channel, where they share insights into their challenges and ongoing work.
Our second interview features Ioannis Papanikolaou, MD, PhD, FEBGH. (“Attikon” University General Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) – who discusses the impact DIOPTRA could have on colorectal cancer screenings.
Here below, a transcript of the interview, with some additional content:
Why is this research on colorectal cancer important?
We have seen an increase in colorectal cancer in younger ages and medically that’s called, “Early-onset colorectal cancer,” and this has, of course, made us wonder why. One explanation is alterations in the environment, either the diet or the environment in general, that result in alterations of the human microbiome, that is the Flora —the germs that inhabit our intestine— and that could lead to alterations that could lead to changes in genes that could lead to cancer.
So, the connection is not so clear, nor is it so direct. We need to do a lot more research in this area, but I would like to focus that it has also been noticed that many of these cases were actually cases that had a familial predisposition, that no one actually took care of, so that underlines the duty of the handling doctors to ask a good familial history on patients that come with complaints from the gut and also many of these patients had symptoms that many doctors disregarded. So, presence of anemia that’s unexplained, or blood seen in the stool should be a red flag for the Physicians and the patients should be handled accordingly.
How can we protect ourselves from colorectal cancer?
We should follow a healthy lifestyle as much as that is possible. Take care of our BMI —that’s our weight— smoking has been linked to colorectal cancer development, so quitting smoking is also a good step towards that direction, and of course we should participate in screening programs, which include either detection of blood in the stool, stool tests or even better for us gastroenterologists to participate in colorectal screening through a colonoscopy.
How can DIOPTRA help?
DIOPTRA is big step to augment the screening programs because it has been noticed that from the patients that actually are indicated to have a screening colonoscopy, just a small portion of them actually go and take advantage of the opportunity and have their colonoscopy performed. Through DIOPTRA, we want to develop proteinic profiles that match the risk of patients to have to develop colorectal cancer, or to have a proteinic profile that shows that you already have colorectal cancer.
So these patients, if they match the according proteinic profiles, will have a special reason to actually go and have their colonoscopy and hence the project will support colorectal cancer screening.
Learn more about DIOPTRA’s Retrospective and Prospective Studies in this video.
