Laura Bowers Works to Sever the Link Between Obesity and Cancer

The Purdue University nutrition researcher delves into the details of how fat tissue affects tumors.

Written byShawna Williams

| 3 min read

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After graduating from Swarthmore College, Laura Bowers considered going to law school—until she worked in a law firm and realized it wasn’t for her. Instead, she earned her dietitian license and worked as a clinical dietitian for four years. But Bowers found herself increasingly interested in “understanding how different nutrients and diet patterns affected disease risk,” she says. She started a PhD in nutritional sciences at the University of Texas at Austin in 2009.

Something clicked soon after Bowers started a rotation in the lab of oncology researcher Linda deGraffenried. There, she says, she “fell in love” with deGraffenried’s research on the influence of obesity on breast and prostate cancers. “I just found that very fascinating, that nutrition can really play a big role in cancer risk as well as response to treatment.” To study obesity’s effects, Bowers validated and started using an in vitro ...

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Meet the Author

Shawna Williams
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Shawna was an editor at The Scientist from 2017 through 2022. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Colorado College and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Previously, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, and in the communications offices of several academic research institutions. As news director, Shawna assigned and edited news, opinion, and in-depth feature articles for the website on all aspects of the life sciences. She is based in central Washington State, and is a member of the Northwest Science Writers Association and the National Association of Science Writers.
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