Deepika Laddu, PhD
Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine
Research Program
Cancer-Focused Research
Dr. Deepika Laddu is a lifestyle intervention scientist with multidisciplinary expertise in chronic disease epidemiology, exercise science, and behavioral intervention research. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating physical activity and exercise interventions to improve functional capacity, cardiometabolic health, symptom burden, and quality of life across aging populations. While her primary research program is centered on cardiovascular disease prevention and management, her work increasingly addresses the growing intersection of cancer and cardiovascular disease, particularly through shared risk factors and functional decline among older adults and women. Through collaborations with cancer researchers at other institutions, she has contributed to research examining physical function and mortality following cancer diagnosis, skeletal muscle loss during cancer treatment, cardiovascular risk among breast cancer survivors, and the impact of exercise-based rehabilitation in patients with cancer and cardiovascular disease. Her clinical trial portfolio includes serving as PI on NIH-funded and foundation-supported exercise interventions targeting sarcopenia, physical functioning, and cardiometabolic risk factors, areas that closely align with cancer prevention and survivorship priorities. She is also the PI of NHLBI-funded R61 trial, collaborating with Dr. Siobhan Phillips, to evaluate optimal exercise prescriptions for blood pressure reduction. She is currently collaborating with Drs. Siobhan Phillips and Betina Yanez on an application designed as an optimization trial of non-hormonal strategies to treat menopausal symptoms in pre-menopausal breast cancer survivors.