Author Description

This book presents the proceedings of a conference on Nutrition and Biotechnology in Heart Disease and Cancer held in December 1993. The book is divided into four sections devoted to heart disease, cancer, heart disease, and cancer and NIH initiatives. The book contains several valuable chapters reviewing the history of studies of nutrition in heart disease and cancer. These chapters are followed by descriptions of the role of dietary and endogenous fats in the development of heart and vascular disease and of recent genetic and molecular information discovered about heart disease. The cancer section reviews the relationship between nutrition and cancer and several putative molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis. The third section discusses commonalities in role of nutrition toward development of heart disease and cancer. The purpose is to explore the commonality of nutrition in the development of heart and vascular disease and cancer.^ The forum from which this book derives sought to bring together presentations of greatest interest in research and therapy involving nutrition, molecular, and biotechnical advances along with a perspective on the most promising areas of future research in these fields. The audience this book is aimed at include leading researchers, administrators, students, and clinicians in the fields of heart and vascular disease, cancer, and nutrition. The book features a wide variety of views concerning the role of nutrition in development of heart disease and cancer. Understanding of these relationships at multiple levels is presented. This book reviews the current state of knowledge relating nutrition and heart disease and cancer. It presents several lines of evidencethat nutritional status has direct influence on heart disease and cancer. Suggested future directions are valuable to investigators, clinicians, and students.^ However, this is book ignores several additional biotechnologies that may yield valuable therapies as well as understanding of the biology of cancer and heart disease, such as PCR, transgenic animals, and antisense technology. Chapters describing many of the new molecular techniques and approaches would ably reinforce the goals of this book. One glaring omission is the lack of chapters exploring the ingestion of alcohol and tobacco and the generation of heart and vascular disease and cancer. Chapters discussing the epidemiology and molecular mechanistic links between these forms of nutrition and these two, expensive, ^^killer^^ diseases, especially in the light of Mickey Mantle's recent death, would have made this book highly relevant.