Karen Mustian, PhD, Wins National Leadership Award at ASCO

Karen Mustian, PhD, MPH

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and its foundation, Conquer Cancer, announced that Karen Mustian, PhD, MPH, at the Wilmot Cancer Institute, is the winner of the 2025 Walter Cancer Foundation Supportive Oncology Award.

One of 11 special awards given by ASCO at its annual meeting, May 30 to June 3, 2025, the Walter Award honors individuals whose research has contributed substantially to supportive cancer care, which includes managing side effects and research aimed at improving quality of life during and after cancer treatment.

Mustian is a pioneer in the field of exercise oncology with more than 25 years of experience and training in clinical exercise physiology and psychology.

She was the first to discover that Tai Chi Chuan is effective for improving functional capacity among breast cancer survivors and to demonstrate that yoga is effective for treating insomnia and fatigue among cancer survivors in a landmark phase III randomized nationwide clinical trial. She was also the first to show that an individualized, home-based exercise prescription for walking and resistance band training is effective for treating cognitive impairment, chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, anxiety, and mood in a phase III nationwide randomized clinical trial.

“I am truly honored to receive this recognition from ASCO and my colleagues across the country,” Mustian said.

She became interested in this field after helping her grandmothers in the 1990s through their treatment for cancer—and seeing a “heartbreaking” lack of knowledge and effective therapies for cancer treatment-related toxicities.

“This award has provided an opportunity to pause and reflect on how far we have come in supportive care and palliative care in oncology,” Mustian said. “We now have a formal field of exercise oncology including workforce training programs, research and clinical programs for patients and survivors. We no longer call things like Tai Chi Chuan, yoga, acupuncture, meditation, and massage ‘alternative medicine’—these therapies have good scientific evidence for effectiveness and are called ‘integrative medicine’ with many being recommended in oncology treatment guidelines.”

Mustian serves as associate director for Population Science at Wilmot, a dean’s distinguished professor in the UR Department of Surgery, and a principal investigator of the University of Rochester Cancer Center NCORP Research Base.

In other developments at ASCO:

• Jamie Flerlage, MD, Wilmot’s chief of pediatric oncology, is presenting results of a clinical trial involving seven institutions that improved treatment for classic Hodgkin Lymphoma in children and young adults.

• Charles Kamen, PhD, associate director of Community Outreach and Engagement at Wilmot and a researcher in the Cancer Prevention and Control program, is presenting results of a study into side effects of immune check point inhibitors (ICI)—a type of cancer treatment—and how they impact certain populations. For example, Black people and breast cancer patients seems to experience poorer cognitive function during and shortly after ICI treatment. The study was designed to improve ways to tailor treatment to reduce side effects.

• Lindsey Mattick, PhD, also part of Wilmot’s Cancer Prevention and Control research program, is presenting a nationwide investigation into sarcopenia, a loss of muscle and function that’s common among cancer patients. The team found that one-third of older adults with advanced cancer have severe sarcopenia, and that providers should prescribe supportive care treatments to reduce patients’ symptoms.