American Cancer Society awards grant to UNC professor

The American Cancer Society recently awarded a UNC faculty member a three-year grant, totaling $421,000, to research strategies for limiting the side effects of chemotherapy.

David Hydock, an assistant professor from the School of Sport and Exercise Science, and his team of University of Northern Colorado researchers will study the factors that lead to severe fatigue in cancer patients being treated with a drug called doxorubicin. Also being studied will be the benefits of exercise in impaired heart and skeletal muscle function, which are usually present with the treatment.

Another SES associate professor, Reid Hayward, and to doctorate students, Eric Bredahl and Noah Gibson, will assist Hydock in the research.

The team will start by investigating cardiac functionality and muscle functionality in a rat model after doxorubicin has been introduced with the hopes that it will begin to show the specific elements of the drug that create such strong side effects in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

The second phase of the project hopes to discover new ways cancer patients can properly manage the side effects of chemotherapy while researching the effects endurance and resistance forms of exercise have on muscle toxicity in a rat model.

The project will being July 1.