Research Type: Blood/Bone Marrow/Lymph Cancer
Project Description
Obesity contributes to the risk for developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia and increases the risk of chemotherapy being less effective and the disease returning in those being treated for it. We hypothesize that diet plus exercise can potentially reverse the process of obesity causing leukemia to become resistant to chemotherapy. Understanding how obesity is connected to leukemia cells is crucial to finding approaches to prevent its development and/or design best treatments for its cure. We will leverage our national trial of diet plus exercise to perform genetic studies of leukemia from patients with/without obesity and in those receiving chemotherapy with/without the nutrition intervention, to provide insight into the connection between obesity and leukemia to find new opportunities to reduce chemotherapy resistance. We will identify new methods to improve chemotherapy effectiveness through diet and exercise, an intervention that can be universally implemented.
