As we hit the TCS New York City Marathon Sunday, colleague Matt Walker penned a piece for this week, on the simplest of best practices; using exercise as a way to aid cancer patients. He looked at the work Dr. Lee Jones and AKTIV Against Cancer, the not for profit formed by the late Grete Waitz, is doing in the space…
Aktiv Against Cancer (AKTIV) supports various cutting edge research projects on the benefits of exercise for the prevention and treatment of cancer. 9-time NYC Marathon Champion and Norwegian running superstar Grete Waitz founded AKTIV in 2007. As Grete Waitz famously said, ‘if physical activity was a pill, it would be the most prescribed medicine in the world’.
With their first major US grant, AKTIV is funding research projects at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which are being led by Dr. Lee Jones PhD, Research Director and renowned exercise scientist. Dr. Jones and his team in the Cardio-Oncology Research Program focus on understanding how exercise may mitigate the cardiovascular side effects of treatment, as well as prevent cancer and cancer progression. Using an approach that spans basic and clinical science, Dr. Jones’ team is investigating how benefits of physical activity extend beyond controlling the symptoms and side effects of cancer therapy, to reduce cancer progression and improve response to anticancer therapy.
A true leader in this field, Dr. Jones has become one of the world’s leading exercise and cancer researchers. Through his research, he is urging US health authorities and hospitals to include physical activity in the standard panel of treatments for cancer patients. Not only as a means of reducing symptoms and the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, but also as part of the treatment of tumors.
As early as 1998, Dr. Jones began studying physical activity and cancer, pioneering this research area. At that time, most doctors advised their patients to lie down and relax while undergoing treatment. Surprisingly, only few recommended physical activity. In the past 15–20 years, Lee Jones and his team have conducted several major studies in this area, their conclusion is clear: maintaining an appropriate level of activity during medical treatment influences a patient’s physical condition.
Dr. Jones’ latest co-clinical study on mice has taken his work a major step forward. The research team divided the mice study into four groups to test different treatment combinations and their effects. The results found that the group, which received no treatment, recorded the fastest tumor growth rate. The group, which received only cytotoxic drugs, and the group whose treatment consisted solely of physical activity both performed better than the untreated group. The final group, which received cytotoxic drugs in combination with physical activity, recorded the lowest tumor growth rate of all four groups. These results hold significant promise for many patients, and time is therefore of the essence. The next steps for Dr. Jones and his team are to examine whether the study’s findings are transferable to humans.
What’s more, this impressive team is exploring how exercise has a positive effect on recurrence and mortality in early breast cancer. In Dr. Jones’ latest study of breast cancer patients, the participants, who received only medical treatment, suffered a significant reduction (-9 percent) in their physical condition from both the illness and the side effects of treatment. The second group of patients, which received medical treatment and tailored activity plan, improved their physical condition (+12 percent) during the study period, despite simultaneously undergoing chemotherapy. One of the most important findings was that the patients in the active group reported ‘higher quality of life’ than those in the other group.
Ultimately, Dr. Jones hopes that physical activity will become part of the standard panel of treatments for cancer patients in the USA within five years, in the form of an activity plan in combination with chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Dr. Jones made reference of this support at the 2016 NYC Marathon event, ‘although the research is in its early days, progress is being made thanks to AKTIV Against Cancer’s support, it has been critical for us. The support from AKTIV against cancer has allowed us to proceed without waiting for funding through traditional channels, which could easily have taken up to a year and a half’.
With both of these research programs, the aim is to identify the effects of physical activity in sufficient detail to allow us to say, ‘the cells of this type of tumor divide in this way’. Based on that, Dr. Jones can then calculate what dose of physical activity a patient needs in combination with the right chemotherapy or radiation treatment. For cancer, there’s convincing evidence that regular exercise is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of certain types such as breast, colon, and prostate cancer. Today, with nearly 14 million people in the United States living with a history of cancer, exercise has gained a lot of traction as part of the survivorship movement.
‘We’re trying to approach the development and investigation of exercise treatment. As you’d think about the development of a new drug, the drug we’re testing just happens to be called exercise.’ Dr. Lee Jones.
