Abstract CN10-03: Childhood obesity and leukemia: Opportunities for intervention

Obesity is a major contributor to cancer mortality, and is responsible for ~90,000 cancer deaths per year in the U.S. Part of this association can be attributed to the effect of obesity to increase cancer incidence, while obesity has been shown to worsen the outcome from a number of types of cancer. Retrospective studies have shown that obese children diagnosed with the high-risk form of the most common childhood cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (HR-ALL) have a substantially higher risk of relapse than lean children.We have investigated these associations, generating laboratory models to investigate how obesity might impact ALL progression and treatment. Using two mouse models, we found that obesity accelerates the appearance of spontaneous leukemia. We have further discovered that obese mice implanted with leukemia had poorer survival after treatment with either vincristine or L-asparaginase. We have identified several effects of adipocytes which appear to contribute to this worse outcome. Adipocytes attract ALL cells to migrate into adipose tissue via secretion of the chemokine CXCL12, protect ALL cells from a number of chemotherapies, absorb chemotherapy leading to unfavorable pharmacokinetics, and secrete glutamine and possibly other fuels to support leukemia cell proliferation. In all, adipocytes have a number of effects which likely contribute to the worse prognosis in obese patients with ALL.These effects are particularly concerning given the high prevalence of ove...
Source: Cancer Prevention Research - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Diet and Cancer: Oral Presentations - Invited Abstracts Source Type: research