Inge Huybrechts

Dr. Inge Huybrechts is a nutritional epidemiologist in the Nutrition and Metabolism Branch at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, with a background in nutrition and a PhD in medical sciences (Ghent University, Belgium). She is also an honorary professor at the Mohammed VI University of Health Sciences (Casablanca, Morocco) and has more than 15 years of experience with nutrition research and lecturing in the domain of nutritional epidemiology. She investigated lifestyle causes of non-communicable diseases, addressed by observational and intervention studies. She is author in more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers, published in journals within the fields of nutrition, epidemiology and obesity. Inge coordinated several projects in the field of epidemiology and public health in the past 15 years. She mainly focused her research on risk factors of obesity and cancer in the first two decades of life (e.g. pregnancy, infancy, childhood and adolescence) and has particular interest in the adverse health effects of the nutrition transition. One of her main ongoing childhood cancer projects focuses on the effect of lifestyle factors (e.g. diet, physical activity & nutritional status) on prognosis and late-effects in children & adolescents with cancer.

Inge has supervised several PhD students in the past 15 years and has been teaching academic courses on several health related topics such as nutritional epidemiology and public health. Her ongoing projects also aim at investigating associations between dietary patterns, food biodiversity and cancer risk while considering co-benefits for human and planetary health.

Together with the International Initiative for Pediatrics and Nutrition (IIPAN), IARC aims to set up a Global Strategy for Building Clinical Capacity and Advancing Research in the Context of Malnutrition and Cancer in Children within Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Scientists will monitor the lifestyle and nutritional status of more than 5000 children and adolescents with cancer in different low- and middle income countries. A similar project is being launched in high income countries where overweight and obesity in children and adolescents is highly prevalent. This information resource will provide abundant opportunities and resources for answering research questions related to the impact of nutrition & other lifestyle factors on cancer progression and prognosis as well as late-effects.

In the "Evaluation of dietary habits, metabolomic and immune profile and microbiota in patients diagnosed with bone sarcoma" project, IARC collaborates with the IRCCS - Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute in Bologna to investigate the data on diet, metabolome, microbiota, and immune profile in patients with a new diagnosis of osteosarcoma or Ewing's sarcoma, which could be targets for future therapies or lifestyle interventions among patients with types of cancer.