Member Spotlight: 2020 Young Investigator Award - Amber Kleckner

2020    Over several newsletter editions, MASCC will feature one of the winners of the 2020 Young Investigators Award (YIA).  Every year, MASCC presents the YIA to recognize outstanding new-to-the-field investigators’ research accomplishments. The award is open to all junior investigators who have submitted an abstract to an upcoming MASCC annual meeting. YIAs are awarded to the first authors of the five abstracts with the highest scores. These abstracts are chosen from the top 10 percent of all abstracts submitted to the annual meeting.  For more information on recent award recipients, click here

This month we highlight MASCC member Amber Kleckner, PhD, of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.  Kleckner’s presentation for the annual meeting is titled “The interrelation between cancer-related fatigue and diabetes: An analysis of 440 patients with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy and controls.

Because the 2020 Annual Meeting was postponed this year (due to the pandemic), Kleckner will present at the 2021 Annual Meeting.  

Kleckner has a background in nutrition, food science, and metabolism. She currently works as a Cancer Control trainee at the University of Rochester Cancer Center (URCC) NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Research Base in Rochester, NY. There, she is learning to conduct clinical trials (local pilot trials through phase III definitive trials) to address the most pressing needs of supportive care in cancer. For example, cancer-related fatigue is a prevalent, debilitating side effect of chemotherapy that often persists for many years into survivorship. Her research involves designing and testing nutritional interventions, for example the Mediterranean Diet and time-restricted eating, to prevent or treat these symptoms. She also explores metabolism and mitochondrial function as factors in the etiology and pathophysiology of cancer-related fatigue. Understanding the mechanisms underlying cancer-related fatigue will enable us to develop evidence-based interventions and biomarkers.

Share this post: