We are pleased to announce that Pauley postdoctoral fellow Moriah Bellissimo, PhD, RD has received a Career Transition Award from Susan G. Komen in support of her project “Physical Activity to Reduce Breast Cancer Treatment Morbidity.” Bellissimo’s research will receive $649,000 over five years.

Susan G. Komen is the world’s leading nonprofit breast cancer organization. Since its founding in 1982, Komen has invested nearly $1.1 billion in breast cancer research, supporting more than 2,800 research studies and 550 clinical trials. One way Komen supports breast cancer research is through its Career Transition Award (CTA), which grants up to $650,000 over up to five years to outstanding postdoctoral and clinical fellows who are working to launch their independent breast cancer research careers.

The CTA provides funding in two phases: Phase 1 supports the researcher’s final years of mentored training, while Phase 2 supports the early career investigator as they move into independent research in a tenure-track role.

Earlier this year, Bellissimo received a Pauley Pilot grant to support her ongoing cardio-oncology and nutrition research, in which she uses lipidomics to investigate changes linked to heart health of women with breast cancer. Her Komen CTA will allow her to expand on that work to investigate the beneficial effects of physical activity on the hearts of women who have undergone chemotherapy.

Today, women with breast cancer have a more than 85% chance of surviving the disease if it is caught early enough. However, treatments used to cure breast cancer, such as chemotherapy, may start to negatively impact heart health within the first three months of treatment. Cardiac side effects of cancer treatment make it more difficult for some patients to do everyday tasks, such as going to work, household chores, or leisure activities such as walking or caring for children. It is these early-treatment and long-term changes in heart health that Bellissimo is investigating.

Phase 1 of Bellissimo’s CTA will build upon work she has done in collaboration with her mentor, Pauley Heart Center Director Greg Hundley, MD. Their research has shown that women who are physically active in the first three months of breast cancer treatment have no significant declines in their cardiac function or exercise capacity (a measurement of how much physical exertion a patient can sustain). In other words, women undergoing chemotherapy may be able to exercise to minimize the negative effects of cancer treatment on their heart health. In Phase 1 of her CTA, Bellissimo will investigate how exercise protects heart health during cancer treatment, and why it seems to do so effectively by analyzing both muscle quality (that is, the amount of fat inside of muscles) and molecules in the blood called cytokines. In patients undergoing chemotherapy, muscle quality often gets worse, and more cytokines that can cause damage are present in the blood. In Phase 1, Bellissimo wants to see how exercise improves these two measures.

Of course, getting into a workout regimen is easier said than done for patients dealing with the physically and emotionally difficult process of chemotherapy treatment. “When you’re immunocompromised, fatigued, nauseous, and your day is completely full, it can be difficult to drive to the gym, shoulder prohibitive membership fees, or even just find the time,” Bellissimo said.

That is why Part 2 of Bellissimo’s CTA will focus on “lifestyle physical activity,” a novel exercise intervention where women undergoing chemotherapy treatment are taught to weave in small amounts of physical activity throughout their day. “Physical activity guidelines often focus on exercise that is in bouts of ten minutes or more,” Bellissimo explained. “Some new evidence shows that we can start thinking about [exercise in] bouts of one, two, or three minutes. In some novel research that we have seen, people who do these short bouts of work can still lower their risk of cardiovascular disease by 48 percent. We are going to test whether lifestyle physical activity is effective for women with breast cancer, if it protects their hearts, if it protects muscle quality, and if it helps reduce inflammation.”

Bellissimo became interested in breast cancer research because she believes this work can impact lives. “From my previous research to my Pauley Pilot grant, to the Komen CTA, I want to empower patients,” she said “I have spoken to patients who don’t feel as though they are active and involved in their health. They want to know what steps they can take on their own to help themselves. And I think this research is going to give them tools throughout their treatment to do just that.”

Bellissimo expressed gratitude to her primary co-mentors, Greg Hundley, MD, and Jessica LaRose, PhD, who will guide her through Phase 1 of this project, and for her other collaborators and mentors: Fadi Salloum, PhD, FAHA; Justin Canada, PhD, RCEP; Ralph D’Agostino, PhD, FAHA; and Bernard Fuemmeler, PhD, MPH.