A University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) researcher is a member of a prestigious team that has just received a highly competitive Endeavor Award totaling $3 million from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research.
/PRNewswire/ The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research announced the recipients of its 2023 Endeavor Award program, providing a total of $12M across seven.
The National Cancer Institute has awarded more than $5.2 million to a team lead by researchers from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center for a study that will fill critical gaps in knowledge around obesity-mediated cancer risk.
A University of Tennessee Health Science Center team has received $2.05 million from the National Cancer Institute for an advanced genetics project that could help develop targeted therapies and personalized treatment for breast cancer. Liza Makowski, PhD, professor of Hematology and Oncology in the College of Medicine, is the lead investigator on the award.
UTHSC researchers publish new findings on how obesity impacts cancer treatments
Liza Makowski, PhD, professor in the Department of Medicine and the UTHSC Center for Cancer Research, has long been interested in how the immune system is altered by obesity and how this impacts cancer risk and treatment. Obesity is complex, because it can cause both inflammation and activate counter-inflammation pathways leading to immunosuppression, Dr. Makowski said. How obesity impacts cancer treatments is understudied.
Obese patients with breast cancer often have worse outcomes than non-obese patients. However, exciting developments are being made in other cancers that may also hold promise for treating breast cancer. In studies of a new type of immunotherapy drug, called a checkpoint inhibitor, obese patients appear to respond better, compared with their leaner counterparts in some cancers, such as melanoma, ovarian, certain lung, and kidney cancers. It is not clear if this finding is also tr