Sigma BioBlogs

Welcome to the second in our blog series on Dr. Reid Hayward of the University of Northern Colorado.

As we mentioned in our first blog, Dr. Hayward is using rat models to study the protective effect of exercise on chemotherapy patients.

One of the side effects of chemotherapeutic treatment with doxorubicin is cardiotoxicity, limiting the effectiveness of drugs by weakening the patient before the treatment can eliminate the cancer. In the use of doxorubicin, cardiotoxicity has taken the form of a weakened heart, with the heart chambers enlarged, and the walls thinned.  Physical activity has been shown to preserve the morphology of the heart during doxorubicin treatment giving the cancer patients a better chance of recovery.

In this video, Dr. Hayward talks about his lab’s findings around doxorubicin’s effects on heart morphology.

This is the first in our series of blogs about Dr. Reid Hayward of the University of Northern Colorado .  Dr. Hayward works with the Rocky Mountain Cancer Rehabilitation Institute (RMCRI) to investigate the protective cardiac effects of exercise on chemotherapy patients who are undergoing clinical treatment at the RMCRI.   The RMCRI has shown that chemotherapy patients who exercise endure the cardiac stress of doxyrubicin and other anthracycline chemotherapeutic agents much better than those who do not have exercise as a part of their treatment plan.

As Dr. Hayward says, “The RMCRI subjects are humans, mine are rats.”  His lab  studies the effects of doxorubicin (DOX) on the cardiovascular system of rats, to investigate what systems, and what molecular components are at work as exercise increases the odds of survival for the patients of RMCRI.

Dr. Hayward investigates morphology and physiology and most recently started to look at the molecular basis for this rehabilitation by studying the effects of exercise on multi-drug resistant protein knockout rats from SAGE™ Labs .