Carl Ade, assistant professor in the kinesiology department and member of the Johnson Cancer Research Center, earned his doctorate in physiology from K-State’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Upon graduating, Ade joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 2013 and began studying the peripheral vascular responses to exercise in cancer survivors previously treated with adjuvant chemotherapy. While at the University of Oklahoma, he became a member of the Stephenson Cancer Center.
In 2016, Ade returned to K-State and has continued in cancer treatment-related cardiotoxicity while expanding his research interests into the physiological consequences of long-duration spaceflight.
Current projects in the Clinical Integrative Physiology Laboratory, with Ade as director, include the evaluation of macro- and microvascular endothelial function in cancer patients during anthracycline-based chemotherapy; Jacob Caldwell, doctoral student in Ade’s lab, is evaluating the effects of dietary nitrates on blood pressure and blood flow control in hypertensive patients; and Ade is collaborating with Thomas Barstow, professor of kinesiology, to determine the fitness for duty standards for the next generation long-duration NASA missions.
The long-term goal of Ade’s research is to expand understanding of three things: first, the important changes in physiological function with cancer and cancer-associated treatments, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hormone deprivation and radiation, for example; long-duration spaceflight; and cardiovascular disease. Second, the biological mechanisms that mediate these changes; and third, the efficacy of interventions, both lifestyle and pharmacologic, for mitigating or reversing these changes in physiological function.
