image: University of Oklahoma Ph.D. candidate Alex Arreola is one of only 15 doctoral students this year to receive the Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition grant from the National Cancer Institute.
Credit: University of Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA CITY – University of Oklahoma Health Campus Ph.D. candidate Alex Arreola has earned a prestigious National Cancer Institute grant – one of only 15 awarded nationwide this year. He is the first trainee from OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center to receive the honor, which will support his doctoral and postdoctoral training in experimental oncology and pathology.
Arreola is researching cachexia, a syndrome characterized by a severe loss of body weight that is highly prevalent in patients with pancreatic cancer. Driven by a loss of appetite and a breakdown of muscle and fat mass, cachexia leads to decreased physical function and a poor quality of life.
“Approximately 80% of patients with pancreatic cancer also suffer from cachexia,” he said. “But the weight loss often occurs before the cancer itself is detected. That’s what I am researching: How is the tumor promoting this weight loss early on? That is especially important in pancreatic cancer research because people are often diagnosed in advanced stages.”
For his doctoral work, Arreola is researching a specific mechanism: a molecule that comes from the tumor and goes to a receptor in the brain stem, which then orchestrates the onset of cachexia. Neither the muscle nor the fat recognizes the molecule – only the receptor in a small region of the brain stem, which tells the body to start breaking down muscle and fat.
Interestingly, this area of the brain is involved in the body’s fight-or-flight response.
“If we are being chased by a lion, we want our muscles to be working at max capacity and for our body to break down energy stores in the fat so we can escape,” he said. “But in this case, the tumor has hijacked the system, and the body starts wasting away.”
During his postdoctoral fellowship, Arreola plans to extend his research to investigate how the tumor communicates with the liver, another potential mechanism that contributes to muscle and fat wasting. The liver is essential for energy homeostasis, but it is also a common site of metastasis in pancreatic cancer.
“Alex is very deserving of this grant from the National Cancer Institute. He has shown a tremendous work ethic and a desire to uncover the mechanisms behind cancer cachexia. He is already making significant contributions to science and no doubt will continue to do so,” said his mentor, Min Li, Ph.D., a professor in the OU College of Medicine and associate director for global oncology for OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center.
Although he is driven by scientific curiosity, Arreola has a much more personal reason for entering the cancer research field: His father had pancreatic cancer.
“Being able to make an impact in this field is very meaningful to me,” he said. “It’s a journey I never saw myself being a part of, but now I don’t see myself being a part of anything else.”
Arreola also enjoys being involved with an academic health system, where patient care is taking place not far from where he works in the lab.
“While I’m not the one giving a drug to a patient, the work that we’re doing in this lab may lead to the next drug that will be given,” he said. “It’s very meaningful to be a part of pushing the science forward. Research is hard, but at the end of the day, it’s a very rewarding field to be in.”
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About the project
Arreola’s grant is called the Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition (F99/K00). It provides funding to outstanding Ph.D. candidates as they complete their dissertation research training (F99 phase) and transition to mentored, cancer-focused postdoctoral career development research positions (K00 phase).
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university with campuses in Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. In Oklahoma City, the OU Health Campus is one of the nation’s few academic health centers with seven health profession colleges located on the same campus. The OU Health Campus serves approximately 4,000 students in more than 70 undergraduate and graduate degree programs spanning Oklahoma City and Tulsa and is the leading research institution in Oklahoma. For more information about the OU Health Campus, visit www.ouhsc.edu.