Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research in Indianapolis might not be a name that rings a bell for most people — but the scientists working there just made a discovery that could change how doctors treat leukemia in patients who are obese.
Reuben Kapur, a researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine, led a team that found something surprising: obesity doesn't just increase the risk of leukemia — it actively fuels the disease. "Rather than treating obesity as a passive risk factor, the work establishes it as an active biological driver linking metabolism, inflammation and cancer," Kapur said.
To understand how, the researchers did two things. First, they looked at electronic health records from more than 440,000 people in the UK Biobank, a huge database of medical information. Second, they ran experiments on mice that had been engineered to develop leukemia. What they found was that obesity causes a state of chronic inflammation — basically, the body stays in a constant, low-level alarm state. That inflammation speeds up the growth of mutated blood stem cells that can turn into leukemia.
Specifically, they noticed two things: very high levels of a molecule called IL-17A, which drives inflammation, and very low levels of something called GLP-1 signaling, which helps regulate metabolism. GLP-1 is the same pathway targeted by popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.
Here is where it gets hopeful. The team tested a two-pronged treatment approach. They combined drugs that block IL-17A — antibodies already used to treat autoimmune diseases — with medications that boost GLP-1 signaling, the same class as popular weight-loss shots. When given to obese mice with leukemia, the combination lowered the amount of cancer in their bodies and improved how their immune systems worked.
"Because these therapies are already available and have established safety profiles, our results raise the possibility of repurposing them either alone or in combination to improve outcomes for patients with high-risk myeloid leukemias," said Santhosh Pasupuleti, a co-senior author of the study and assistant research professor of pediatrics at IU.
The researchers say their next step is to test the treatment in actual patients through clinical trials. They also want to figure out which patients would benefit most and whether this approach could work for other types of cancer beyond leukemia.
"The demonstration that metabolic dysfunction can reprogram immune responses to promote cancer progression has implications for multiple malignancies," Kapur said, "and suggests that metabolic interventions could become a foundational component of cancer prevention and therapy."
In short: drugs that millions of people already take for weight loss or diabetes might one day be part of a treatment that fights cancer, too.