Wake Forest Baptist Health Brenner Children's Hospital Archives

2014

Scholar Grant

Dr. Sharon Castellino

Winston-Salem, NC

Due to successful cancer therapy, childhood cancer survivors are entering the adult population at increasing rates. However, specific therapies that are curative also put these young adults at risk for premature cardiac and cardiovascular health issues in their lifetime. Our proposal aims to take concepts from the science of aging to study and identify cardiovascular risk in survivors a time when it is modifiable. The goal is to study chronic inflammation, as a biomarker of this in the blood may identify these survivors early and design drug or exercise interventions to halt further cardiac injury. We plan to study adolescent and young adult cancer survivors who received anthracycline chemotherapy and are currently asymptomatic. Our primary aim is to evaluate several proteins (cytokines) that are indicative of aging (senescence) of the vascular system, and see if they are expressed in higher levels or different patterns in the blood of childhood cancer survivors compared to age-matched healthy young adults without a cancer history. This is a novel approach to think about pathways that may be causing accelerated cardiovascular injury and premature aging of the cardiovascular system after cancer therapy. The unique aspect of our study is that we will also have cardiac MRI studies from this cohort (based on another study), and be able to see if the patterns of inflammation in blood correlate to early changes in the heart or aorta. Currently there are no interventions (medications or behavior changes) for cancer survivors who develop late cardiovascular risks, as there is no way to identify them before the injury is solidified. Our approach could yield early detection methods, which will facilitate interventions to stop or halt cardiovascular injury.