Kinesiology professor awarded internal grant for exercise-related cancer research

Sang-Rok Lee, a kinesiology associate professor, received an internal grant from the Partnership for the Advancement of Cancer Research between NMSU and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center supported by the National Cancer Institute.

Lee and his research partner at Fred Hutch, David Hockenbery, received funds for a project titled, “Exercise Countermeasure Strategies to Counteract Cancer Cachexia and Starve Tumors.” The project is funded through Aug. 31, 2023. Their research focuses on cancer-associated cachexia, a condition characterized by severe muscle wasting despite nutritional support in patients with metastatic cancers, and addresses the role exercise may play as a prevention measure to cancer-induced cachexia and tumor growth.

About 80 percent of metastatic cancer patients suffer from cachexia, which often renders them too weak to tolerate standard doses of anticancer therapies and makes them susceptible to death from cardiac and respiratory failure. Current treatments to reduce cachexia have not led to positive clinical outcomes.

The research by Lee and Hockenbery aims to characterize the potential benefits from different exercise regimes on minimizing both tumor growth and muscle wasting in mice models of cancer and can have important implications for development of new solutions in cancer patients. 

Lee attributes his successful grant award to attending the National Institutes of Health-funded iMERS, or Interactive Mentoring to Enhance Research Skill, conference in 2019.

“The NIH Interactive Grant-Writing Workshop is greatly helpful for researchers at Minority-Serving Institutions to improve their grant proposal,” Lee says. “I learned strategies from the experts who have successfully completed NIH-funded research projects for a path toward successful grant proposal development.”