Meet Our Director
One could say that Stephen Freedland, MD, director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle (CIRCL), has come full circle. Freedland’s father was a well-published researcher on nutrition at University of California, Davis. As a youngster, Freedland was drawn to research and the process of asking and answering questions. He did not love the focus on nutrition that was characteristic of his father’s work. Thus, he sought to get far away from nutrition research—and decided to study cancer instead. Freedland went on to receive his medical degree at University of California, Davis, and complete a urology residency at UCLA, followed by a fellowship in urologic oncology at Johns Hopkins. During these years, prostate cancer became one of his primary interests, mainly because it was one of the most common and least understood cancers. He began to publish papers on prostate disease, most of them an effort to stratify prostate cancer risk and differentiate "good" cancers from "bad" cancers.
One of Freedland’s early papers compared prostate cancer in obese participants to prostate cancer in participants with healthy weights, finding a relationship between the severity of the cancer and the weight of the participant. This created a, "huh, that’s interesting," moment for Freedland, who returned in future studies to the role of weight in prostate cancer.
As his career progressed, Freedland observed that lifestyle factors were not being researched rigorously, and compelling research results on these issues were not being communicated efficiently or regularly to the public. CIRCL is the result of these observations.
Without setting out to do it, Freedland has built on the legacy of his father’s research in nutrition. At CIRCL, Freedland has developed a focused team that collaboratively and rigorously researches how nutrition and other lifestyle factors influence cancer risk and progression. CIRCL is participating in four clinical trials focusing on diet and exercise, and numerous trials focusing on stress management, with more in the pipeline. In the coming year, Freedland plans to build the CIRCL team (adding directors of translational science and clinical trials) and to expand the basic science studies to better understand the mechanisms of the influence of lifestyle on cancer.
It is clear to Freedland that the coming year will be challenging, but he finds this motivating. According to Freedland, "It is clear that genes load the gun but lifestyle pulls the trigger. Now we just need to figure out how to un-pull the trigger."
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