Prof. Christine Desmedt, researcher at KU Leuven, has received the Alexandre and Gaston Tytgat Foundation Prize. This important prize is awarded every three years to French- and Flemish-speaking researchers in support of their cancer research.

On February 2, 2026, in Brussels, Christine Desmedt, associate professor and researcher at the Department of Oncology at KU Leuven, received the 16th Alexandre and Gaston Tytgat Foundation Prize amounting to €25,000. This national prize is intended to support cutting-edge cancer research.

Unraveling the breast cancer-obesity connection

Breast cancer is currently the most common cancer among women worldwide. Concurrently, obesity affects nearly half of women in industrialized countries. These two public health issues are closely linked: excess body fat not only increases the risk of developing breast cancer but also worsens its progression.

Despite this reality, current breast cancer treatments do not yet account for a patient’s body composition—or more specifically, their level of adiposity (the amount of fat present in the body). A primary reason for this gap is that the majority of research has traditionally been conducted on experimental animal models (such as mice) rather than on human patients. Urgent action is needed to bridge this knowledge gap.

A decade of dedicated patient-centric research

“For the past ten years,” explains Prof. Desmedt, “our team has been dedicated to gaining a deeper understanding of the impact of obesity—and more broadly, adiposity—on breast cancer at multiple levels:

• How adiposity influences tumor biology.
• Whether it is linked to faster disease progression in clinical settings that remain understudied.
• How it alters treatment response or increases treatment toxicity.
• And finally, whether lifestyle interventions can improve clinical outcomes for patients.”

Her laboratory’s efforts have already delivered tangible progress, yielding results that are directly applicable in clinical settings while providing a strong foundation for new research initiatives.

Towards meaningful clinical impact

For Prof. Desmedt, generating actionable knowledge is essential to transforming patient care on several fronts:

• For patients: Identifying targeted strategies to prevent treatment failures and recurrences associated with adiposity.
• For clinicians: Providing a solid scientific rationale to guide the design of future clinical trials.
• For the scientific community: Generating unprecedented data and novel perspectives on the complex interplay between breast cancer and obesity.