Riboflavin and friends: Remarkably versatile vitamins

Having been awarded the 2019 British Nutrition Foundation Annual Prize I had looked forward to delivering a lecture to assembled guests at the BNF Annual Day at the Royal College of Physicians in London, in 2020. Unfortunately, this was not to be; the COVID‐19 global pandemic prevented a face‐to‐face meeting, and my talk was delivered remotely. In the paper, I shall summarise some of the research that I have carried out during my career as a nutrition scientist. I shall not dwell in much detail on any single aspect of my work but rather I shall attempt to show how my research interests developed over the decades, how one thing led to another, so to speak. The elements of my work that I have selected, in order to make this short walk together, commence with vitamin B2, riboflavin and a consideration of two particular aspects of function. I then move on to folate in the context of homocysteine metabolism and cardiovascular disease and finally consider the role of this vitamin and other methyl donors in cancer risk and outcome.