New research by KI members Omer Yilmaz and David Sabatini sheds light on how a high-fat diet can lead to an increased risk of colon cancer. The team, who published their results in Nature, found that mice fed a high-fat diet exhibit an increased proliferation of both intestinal stem cells and progenitor cells that acquire stemness, both of which increase the risk of tumor formation. If the results hold true for humans, they offer a clue to explain the mechanism by which a high-fat diet contributes to cancer risk. This work was supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, and by the V Foundation.