Professor Tim Key
Contact information
+44 (0)1865 289648
Fax +44 (0)1865 289610
Research groups
- Breast cancer
- Cancer Risk in Vegetarians Consortium
- Cardiovascular disease
- Diet and nutrition: health of vegetarians and vegans
- Dietary Protein and Stroke Consortium
- Endogenous Hormones and Breast Cancer
- Endogenous Hormones, Nutritional Biomarkers and Prostate Cancer
- EPIC-Prostate
- Feeding the future study (FEED)
- Health and lifestyle
- Prostate cancer
- Shift work and disease
Tim Key
BVM&S, MSc, DPhil
Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology
- Cancer Epidemiology Unit
Tim Key's main interests are the roles of diet and hormones in the aetiology of cancer, particularly cancers of the breast, prostate and colon, and the health status of vegetarians and vegans.
He currently works mostly on the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), as a member of the Steering Committee for the Oxford cohort of 60,000 subjects, including 30,000 people who don’t eat meat.
Tim Key has worked as a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Oxford since 1985.
Recent publications
Vegetarian diets and cancer risk: pooled analysis of 1.8 million women and men in nine prospective studies on three continents.
Journal article
Dunneram Y. et al, (2026), Br J Cancer
Evaluation of the 4Kscore Test in Relation to Subsequent Risk of Aggressive Prostate Cancer in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.
Journal article
Smith-Byrne K. et al, (2025), Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 34, 2058 - 2067
The plasma proteome of plant-based diets: Analyses of 2920 proteins in 49,615 people.
Journal article
Tong TYN. et al, (2025), Clin Nutr, 53, 144 - 154
lcohol and smoking habits in association with hepatocellular carcinoma risk.
Journal article
Aglago EK. et al, (2025), Int J Cancer, 157, 644 - 657