William Hundley
Virginia Commonwealth University, VA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in North American women. Many survivors are now harmed more by heart disease than by cancer itself, partly because some chemotherapy drugs can damage the heart.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
breast cancer
cardio-oncology
cardiotoxicity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2030
What they work on
- Test whether a home-based, individually tailored physical activity program plus a healthy living intervention, compared with the healthy living intervention alone, preserves peak oxygen consumption in 150 women receiving anthracycline chemotherapy for breast cancer.
- Measure whether exercise during chemotherapy protects left ventricular function and heart muscle tissue, including fibrosis, using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and cardiopulmonary exercise testing.
- Assess the intervention's effects on fatigue, health-related quality of life, physical activity and sedentary behavior, and how these outcomes relate to each other in breast cancer patients.
- Examine systemic inflammation and dietary fatty acid intake as factors linked to cancer-treatment-related heart dysfunction and to exercise capacity during chemotherapy.
More about the research
Patients also tend to become inactive and fatigued during treatment, which can lower their fitness for years afterward. This project asks whether staying physically active during chemotherapy can protect the heart and preserve fitness and quality of life.
Why it matters
Women treated with anthracycline chemotherapy for breast cancer face a raised risk of later heart problems, along with fatigue and lost fitness. If tailored home exercise during treatment preserves heart function and exercise capacity, it could offer oncology practices a practical, patient-centered way to lower cardiovascular risk and improve quality of life for breast cancer survivors, and possibly for patients with other cancers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alexandra Thomas
Duke University, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Characterize and quantify small-vessel (microvascular) injury and changes in heart blood flow during early near-complete estrogen deprivation, using serial cardiac MRI stress studies over two years.
Theodore Abraham
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how heart muscle function limits exercise in non-obstructive HCM by measuring regional and global myocardial strain with echocardiography at rest and at peak exercise, and relating it to exercise capacity.
Malamo Countouris
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test in a randomized trial whether an angiotensin receptor blocker-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNI) lowers left ventricular mass index more than an angiotensin receptor blocker alone in women with prior preeclampsia and current hypertension.
The school
Virginia Commonwealth University: 19 labs on PI Pages, $524M a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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