“Exercise and Cancer Development and Progression
Featuring: Lee Jones, PhD
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Lee Jones, PhD
“Exercise and Cancer Development and Progression" (Lee Jones, PhD) [#143] Brad Power May 14, 2025 “There's no randomized data suggesting that exercise lowers the risk of any form of cancer.” – Lee Jones, PhD “When we measured individuals going through standard chemotherapy, we found that fitness could decline anywhere from 5% to 20% over a period of three months.
If you talk to anybody who's been through chemotherapy, they will tell you, ‘I feel like there's been a significant detriment.’ And people say, ‘Well, that's expected.’ Typically, you see a 10% decline in somebody's fitness level over a decade; your fitness will decline 1% per year. You see 10 to 15 years of aging in just three to six months of chemotherapy.
We started to describe this model of accelerated physiological aging.” – Lee Jones, PhD “I work on thinking from a biological perspective, a translational perspective, how exercise can influence cancer. That's either from a prevention standpoint, or in individuals with cancer, asking fundamental questions, such as, ‘Can we prevent it in the first place?’ ‘Can we slow it down?
’ Or, ‘Can we prevent it from coming back?’” – Lee Jones, PhD Meeting Summary While medical researchers have made significant advances in cancer therapies, these are far from perfect and complementary approaches are needed that are non-toxic and may also help lower your risk of progression and improve your outcomes.
Exercise is an intervention you can use to control or offset your cancer and the side effects of therapies. You may wonder which exercise and other lifestyle approaches you should adopt after your cancer diagnosis that are grounded in scientific research.
Lee Jones, Director, Exercise-Oncology Program, Member and Attending Physiologist, Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Professor, Weill Cornell Medical College, is uniquely qualified to talk about the latest research on exercise and cancer development and progression.
His academic career has focused on a near patient translational approach on the effects and mechanisms of highly controlled exercise in health and disease with an emphasis on cancer. His team was among the first to adopt traditional and molecular epidemiological approaches to investigate the link between post-diagnosis exercise and clinical outcomes in patients with cancer.
Building on these efforts, they leveraged established as well as novel mouse model systems to uncover whether and how exercise alters tumor growth kinetics and biology at the cellular and molecular level.
They have translated these efforts to the clinic, conducting some of the first prospective clinical trials investigating the tolerability, safety, and efficacy of exercise therapy across the entire cancer trajectory (i.e., prevention to advanced disease).
conducting some of the first prospective clinical trials investigating the tolerability, safety, and efficacy of exercise therapy across the entire cancer trajectory (i.e., prevention to advanced disease). Adhering to a rigorous translational development pipeline, they are conducting the first ever phase 1 trials to evaluate the tolerability and tissue / tumor biological efficacy of exercise therapy in persons with and at-risk of cancer. To enhance conduct of these trials, they have
“Exercise and Cancer Development and Progression" (Lee Jones, PhD) [#143] pioneered a decentralized, patient-centric approach called the Digital Platform for Exercise (DPEx) which permits all study procedures to be conducted remotely inpatient’s homes. Why is exercise important for cancer patients?
●Mitigate treatment side effects : can help prevent the significant decline in fitness during cancer treatment; you can lose 5-20% of your fitness in just three months of chemotherapy. ●Counteract accelerated aging : can help slow or reverse the process of rapid physiological aging – feeling like you’ve aged 10 years in just a few months.
●Slow cancer progression : can influence cancer progression, potentially preventing recurrence or slowing cancer growth, according to emerging research. ●Improve overall physical function : can help maintain muscle mass, strength, and cardiovascular health during and after treatment.
●Support your immune system : can enhance immune surveillance, potentially helping the body detect and control damaged or mutated cells. ●Improve therapy response : can improve response to certain cancer therapies. What is the emerging scientific evidence connecting exercise and outcomes for cancer patients, including potential benefits?
●Observational studies suggest exercise may lower risk of 13 different cancer types, potentially reduce cancer mortality (especially in breast and colorectal cancers), and mitigate physiological aging during and after cancer treatment. ●Current research focuses on understanding exercise as a potential cancer treatment strategy, in addition to a symptom control intervention.
●Ongoing phase three trials (studies that test safety and how well a new treatment works compared with a standard treatment) are investigating exercise's impact on cancer recurrence and overall survival. There is no randomized data suggesting that exercise lowers the risk of any form of cancer. ●Preliminary research shows promising findings, e.g.
, in a prostate cancer study, 225 minutes of weekly exercise was feasible (i.e., achieved good compliance) and showed promising biological activity in tumor markers. ●Challenges remain: more rigorous research is needed to definitively prove exercise's anti-cancer effects, treating it more like a "drug" with careful dosing and patient selection. What is general advice on exercise?
●Aim for 225 minutes of exercise per week, spread across 5 days. (This is only for prostate cancer.
more rigorous research is needed to definitively prove exercise's anti-cancer effects, treating it more like a "drug" with careful dosing and patient selection. What is general advice on exercise? ●Aim for 225 minutes of exercise per week, spread across 5 days. (This is only for prostate cancer. We don’t know if it applies to other tumor types yet.
) ●Personalize your prescription of exercise based on your fitness level and what your target is: body composition vs. fitness vs. cancer control. There is overlap, but the goal is to match your prescription with your goal and not just “one size fits all”.
●Consult with qualified exercise physiologists or oncology teams to develop a personalized exercise plan How should you personalize your exercise?
“Exercise and Cancer Development and Progression" (Lee Jones, PhD) [#143] ●Consider your current treatment stage, cancer type, physiological capacity, and potential risk of over-training to create a precise, adaptable exercise plan. Vary intensities and session lengths within the same week.
In the future you will also base your exercise prescription on other characteristics, such as treatment type, tumor biology, etc ●Conduct a cardiopulmonary exercise test to determine your baseline fitness level ●Monitor your compliance and physiological adaptation and modify your program based on your progress; focus on finding your "sweet spot" of exercise dosage How can you learn more?
●Reach out to Lee Jones for discussions and questions and to get links to his papers at lee.jonesphd@gmail.com ●Review previous Cancer Patient Lab discussion on exercise, including: ○“Exercise to Boost Your Immune System to Fight Cancer” (Dr.
Tom Incledon) [#49] ○Adding Exercise for Everyday Life and Developing a Medical Device to Personalize Cancer Treatment (Cathy Skinner) [#47] ○“Exercise as a Countermeasure to Hormone Deprivation Therapy Side Effects and for Bone and Mental Health” (Kerri Winters-Stone) [#48] The information and opinions expressed on this website or platform, or during discussions and presentations (both verbal and written) are not intended as health care recommendations or medical advice by Cancer Patient Lab, its principals, presenters, participants, or representatives for any medical treatment, product, or course of action.
You should always consult a doctor about your specific situation before pursuing any health care program, treatment, product or other course of action that might affect your health. For the video recording of this conversation, please see here.
“Exercise and Cancer Development and Progression" (Lee Jones, PhD) [#143] Meeting Notes KEYWORDS Exercise oncology, cancer treatment, exercise physiology, fitness decline, biological aging, exercise trials, phase three trials, exercise prescription, cancer recurrence, exercise benefits, resistance training, aerobic training, inflammation, hormesis, exercise compliance. SPEAKERS
otes KEYWORDS Exercise oncology, cancer treatment, exercise physiology, fitness decline, biological aging, exercise trials, phase three trials, exercise prescription, cancer recurrence, exercise benefits, resistance training, aerobic training, inflammation, hormesis, exercise compliance.
SPEAKERS Lee Jones (79%), Cindy Ness (5%), Brad Power (5%), Richard Anders (4%), Roger Royse (2%), Chris Apfel (2%), Alexander Lalov (1%), Rick Davis (1%), Jim Ward (1%) CHAT CONTRIBUTORS Robb Owen, Alane Watkins, Roger Royse, Se, Alexander Lalov, David Plunkett, Cindy Ness, Rick Davis, Jim Ward, Chris Apfel, Richard Anders SUMMARY Lee Jones, a PhD researcher on exercise and cancer, discussed his career trajectory and current research at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
He highlighted the lack of evidence in the early 1990s on the feasibility and benefits of exercise in cancer patients, leading to his first studies in colorectal, breast, prostate, and lung cancers. Jones emphasized the importance of rigorous exercise trial design, including phase one studies to identify optimal doses and feasibility.
His recent work found that 225 minutes of exercise per week was the most effective dose for prostate cancer patients, with higher doses showing no additional benefits. Jones also discussed the challenges and benefits of a decentralized exercise trial model. OUTLINE Introducing Lee Jones ●Lee Jones, a PhD researcher on exercise and cancer. ●His journey has been from the UK to Canada to the US.
●His early career was in Edmonton, Alberta, where he worked with Kerry Courneya on the first studies in exercise for individuals with cancer. ●He moved to Duke University in North Carolina, where he started his lab and received grants for his research. ●He joined Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) in 2014, where he established the exercise oncology program with a team of 32-33 people.
●He recently accepted a new position at City of Hope in East LA, starting on July 5, where he will start a new research program in exercise oncology. Initial Research and Findings ●His initial focus was on behavioral exercise intervention, studying how to initiate and maintain exercise in individuals with cancer.
“Exercise and Cancer Development and Progression" (Lee Jones, PhD) [#143] ●There was a lack of evidence in the early 1990s to suggest that exercise was feasible or beneficial for individuals with cancer. ●His first studies in colorectal, breast, prostate, and lung cancers showed the feasibility and tolerability of exercise during and after therapy.
●He became interested in the physiological adaptations and consequences of cancer and cancer treatment, using exercise physiology tools to measure organ function during stress. Impact of Cancer Treatment on Fitness ●There is a significant decline in fitness levels during cancer treatment, with a 5-20% decline in fitness over three months.
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