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Purpose
The purpose of the Body Composition and Cancer Outcomes Research webinar series is to provide an opportunity for researchers and other interested individuals to share lessons learned, new methodologies, and new research integrating measures of body composition in cancer epidemiology research. This series is hosted by the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program.
All interested individuals are invited to participate, however pre-registration is required. Each presentation will be about 30-40 minutes in length to allow for 20-30 minutes of discussion. Instructions for connecting to the webinars will be sent via e-mail to individuals who register.
Past Topics and Speakers
2022
Fighting Fracture Risk in Cancer Survivors: Is Exercise Enough?

Kerri Winters-Stone, PhD, FACSM
Professor and Section Head, Cancer Population Sciences, Division of Oncological Sciences
Co-Program Leader, Cancer Prevention & Control
Co-Director, Community Partnership Program
Knight Cancer Institute
Oregon Health & Science University
Dr. Winters-Stone is an exercise scientist whose original work involved developing prescriptive exercise programs to prevent osteoporosis and fractures in people without cancer. In this seminar she gave an overview of how she has applied that work over the last 15 years to study whether exercise could be an effective countermeasure to fractures that are elevated from cancer treatment.
Considerations for Body Composition in Ovarian Cancer Interventions and Analysis

Tracy E. Crane, PhD, RDN
Associate Professor, Medical Oncology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Co-Lead, Cancer Control Research Program, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center
Skeletal Muscle Adaptations to Cancer and Its Treatment

Michael J. Toth, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair for Research
Department of Medicine
University of Vermont College of Medicine
Dr. Toth presented an overview of research examining the effects of cancer and its treatment on skeletal muscle size and function in humans, ranging from the whole body to the cellular level, and how maladaptations in skeletal muscle contribute to impaired physical functional capacity and quality of life. He also discussed the utility of exercise as an intervention to mitigate the detrimental effects of cancer and its treatment across the cancer continuum.
Body Composition Change in Pancreatic Cancer: Trajectory and Implications for Early Detection

Ana Babic, PhD, MS
Instructor in Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School

Michael H. Rosenthal, MD, PhD, FSAR
Attending Radiologist, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
Assistant Director for Radiology, DFBWCC Pancreaticobiliary Tumor Center
Dr. Babic described her work on early detection of pancreatic cancer using body composition analysis–specifically her work on changes in muscle and adipose tissue in years preceding diagnosis–and discussed how these changes can be leveraged as screening biomarkers of pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Rosenthal presented an overview of his research on body composition in pancreatic cancer. He discussed initial studies that suggested a link between muscle breakdown and early cancer and their subsequent evolution through mouse models and human studies. He also reviewed the role of AI-based automation in body composition analysis, how this approach was used to develop a reference cohort to normalize for demographic-related differences in body composition, and how demographic-adjusted body composition metrics can improve the power of body composition studies.
Adverse Body Composition Changes That Affect Cancer Survivors: Detection, Devising Interventions That Work, and Measuring Impact

Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD
Professor and Webb Endowed Chair of Nutrition Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
Associate Director of Cancer Prevention and Control, O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB
Dr. Demark-Wahnefried presented an overview of her research, ranging from observational studies that first documented sarcopenic obesity among cancer patients to diet, exercise, and weight management studies that improve body composition and result in improved outcomes among cancer survivors. She also discussed important questions surrounding communication with patients and the translation of research to clinical care and scalable interventions within the community.
Sarcopenia and Treatment Tolerability in Older Patients with Advanced Cancer

Supriya G. Mohile, MD, MS
Philip and Marilyn Wehrheim Professor of Medicine and Surgery
Director, Geriatric Oncology Research
Co-Program Leader, Cancer Prevention and Control Program
Wilmot Cancer Institute

Richard F. Dunne, MD, MS
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Leader, Gastrointestinal Cancer Unit and Clinical Research
Wilmot Cancer Institute
University of Rochester Medical Center
Drs. Mohile and Dunne discussed their work examining the relationship between body composition and anti-cancer treatment tolerability in older adults with cancer.
Energy Balance in Colorectal Cancer: From Body Composition to Adipose-tumor Interactions

Jennifer Ose, PhD, MS
Research Assistant Professor
Department of Population Health Sciences and Huntsman Cancer Institute
University of Utah

Cornelia M. Ulrich, PhD, MS
Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Director, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Huntsman Cancer Institute
Jon M. and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professor in Cancer Research, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah
Drs. Ulrich and Ose presented their work from the ColoCare Study using body composition measures to understand colorectal cancer biology and clinical outcomes. They discussed their findings for CT-derived measures of body composition, biomarkers of angiogenesis and inflammation, as well as direct adipose tissue-tumor interaction.
Targeting Adipose Inflammation to Improve Breast Cancer Outcomes

Neil M. Iyengar, MD
Associate Member & Attending Physician
Breast Medicine Service, Evelyn H. Lauder Breast and Imaging Center
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Iyengar presented his group’s research investigating the impact of adipose tissue biology on cancer progression. He discussed how adiposity alters the tumor microenvironment and ongoing intervention trials that seek to reduce adiposity, optimize body composition, and improve breast cancer outcomes.
New Insights into Clinical Importance and Genetics of Body Fat Distribution

Saaket Agrawal
Broad Institute
In this webinar, Saaket Agrawal discussed his work utilizing MRI-derived measurements of adiposity to understand disease associations and the genetic architecture of body fat distribution. He also discussed how an individual's outline can be used to estimate these adiposity measurements to provide disease prediction information independent of body mass index and waist circumference.
2021
Body Composition in Cancer Epidemiology: Assessment, Associations and Future Directions

Elizabeth Feliciano, ScD, MSc
Kaiser Permanente Northern California
Dr. Feliciano presented an overview of her research examining body composition as an important risk factor for short- and long-term outcomes after a cancer diagnosis. She also discussed important questions surrounding this issue, including the biologic mechanisms that underlie these relationships, developing safe and accurate measures of body composition for use in the clinic, and how patient body composition is most relevant to clinical care.
Defining and Managing Cachexia at the Individual Level

Marcus DaSilva Goncalves, MD, PhD
Weill Cornell Medical College
Dr. Goncalves presented an overview of his clinical work assessing and managing cachexia in cancer patients. He used specific case examples and retrospective data to highlight potential weight management strategies.
Body Composition and Treatment-Related Toxicities

Michael Sawyer, MD, BSc Pharmacy
Medical Oncologist and Clinical Pharmacologist, Cross Cancer Institute
Professor, Department of Oncology, Division of Medical Oncology, University of Alberta
Dr. Sawyer presented an overview of research describing how body composition contributes to treatment-related toxicities in cancer patients. Implications for drug dosing and metabolism were discussed.
Investigating the BMI Paradox in Kidney Cancer
Helena Furberg, MSPH, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Furberg discussed the body mass index (BMI) paradox in kidney cancer- where patients who have high BMI at diagnosis survive longer than patients who are classified as normal weight. She highlighted the research her group is doing related to the molecular underpinnings of this association and also described the RESOLVE Study which refines BMI into body composition features and transcriptomically profiles tumors from more than 1,000 kidney cancer patients treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to more accurately identify patients at highest mortality risk.
2020
Automating Body Composition from Routinely Acquired CT images-towards 3D measurements

Mirza Faisal Beg, PhD, PEng
Simon Fraser University
Dr. Beg presented recent developments in automating body composition measurements from CT scans and discussed applications for research.
Sarcopenia and Cancer Survival: Findings, Gaps, and Future Research

Bette J. Caan, DrPH
Senior Research Scientist and Nutritional Epidemiologist
Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Division of Research
Dr. Caan presented an overview of the work to date on sarcopenia (loss of skeletal muscle mass and/or function) and cancer outcomes. She discussed methodological challenges and existing research gaps and identify future directions.
Previous Body Composition and Cancer Webinar Series
A previous series of webinars, hosted by Dr. Bette Caan of Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, was held from 2018-2020.
- 06/18/2020
Andrew Dannenberg, MD, MPH - “Measurement of adipose inflammation and its relationship to body composition.” - 05/21/2020
Peggy Cawthon, PhD, MPH - “The new sarcopenia definition and outcomes consortium definitions of sarcopenia in aging: How can we adapt them to be used for cancer patients?” - 04/16/2020
Michael Rosenthal, MD, PhD - “Automated measurement of body composition in cancer patients: a radiologist perspective on integrating into clinical care.” - 02/20/2020
Kristin Campbell, PhD - “Maintaining muscle health with exercise in cancer survivors: when and how to intervene.” - 01/16/2020
Jose Garcia, PhD - “The biology of muscle loss in cancer and current therapeutic trials for the treatment of muscle loss.” - 12/19/2019
Patrick Bradshaw, PhD - “Optimal stratification cutpoints for definition of sarcopenia and other body composition measures: When is it appropriate and when is it not?” - 11/21/2019
Maria Cristina Gonzalez, MD, PhD - “The use of bioelectrical impedance analysis (and phase angle) in cancer research.” - 10/17/2019
Stewart Wang, MD, PhD - “Normative values for body composition from multiple non-cancer populations.” - 09/26/2019
Carla Prado, PhD - “Building muscle mass with targeted nutrition supplementation.” - 05/09/2019
Karteek Popuri, PhD - “Automatic image segmentation for Body Composition Analysis” - 04/11/2019
Bill Evans, PhD - “Use of D3-creatine dilution to measure muscle mass” - 03/14/2019
Brian Wolpin, MD - “Altered systemic metabolism as a marker of early pancreatic cancer” - 02/14/2019
Steven Heymsfield, MD - “11th International SCWD conference on cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle wasting” - 01/10/2019
Marina Mourtzakis, PhD - “Methodological considerations for measuring muscle and fat quantity and quality using computed tomography and ultrasound.” - 11/08/2018
Vickie Baracos, PhD - “Chemotoxicity in cancer: the sarcopenic obese patient.”