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Cancer

Uncovering risk factors in the exposome for early-onset colorectal cancer

(2026)Cite this article

The alarming rise in the incidence of colorectal cancer among younger individuals is probably due to environmental factors; epigenetic signatures of exposures may help uncover drivers of this trend, but questions remain.

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Fig. 1: Epigenetic fingerprints of the exposome and the rising incidence of early-onset CRC.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    David J. Lee, Sylvan Baca & Kimmie Ng

  2. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    David J. Lee, Sylvan Baca & Kimmie Ng

  3. Center for Functional Cancer Epigenetics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Sylvan Baca

Authors
  1. David J. Lee
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  2. Sylvan Baca
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  3. Kimmie Ng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kimmie Ng.

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Competing interests

K.N. has received institutional research funding from Pharmavite, LLC and Janssen; participated on advisory boards for AbbVie, Agenus, CytomX, Genmab, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Revolution Medicines and Sanofi; consulted for Amgen, AstraZeneca, CRICO and Etiome/Flagship Pioneering; and serves as an associate editor at JAMA. The author authors declare no competing interests.

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Lee, D.J., Baca, S. & Ng, K. Uncovering risk factors in the exposome for early-onset colorectal cancer. Nat Med (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04369-8

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