Dr. Kerry Courneya

So they all start developing these blood vessels.

What they were able to show

in these exercise studies that exercise improves the quality of these blood vessels and the density of these blood vessels.

And while you're improving the quality of these blood vessels, what that improved was chemotherapy delivery to the tumor.

So it improved the delivery of the drugs to the tumor.

What it also does is improve perfusion to the tumor.

And these tumors become better oxygenated.

That's critical because radiation therapy is effective with well oxygenated tumors.

If they are hypoxic tumors, they're not radiosensitive.

So now we start thinking, if you're exercising while getting radiation therapy or while getting chemotherapy, we might improve delivery of the drugs to the tumor and improvements in making them more radiosensitive.

And we've seen this in actual human studies.

So in actual studies with patients, we did a study in rectal cancer patients.

And the treatment for them is a combination of chemoradiation therapy prior to having the tumor surgically removed 12 weeks later.

So they want to shrink and try and eliminate that tumor.

And what we found is the patients who exercise while getting this chemoradiation therapy were more likely to have a complete response, meaning the tumors were completely gone prior to having the surgery.

So this is a very profound and important benefit of exercise potentially in these patients who are getting treated with what we call neoadjuvant therapy, this kind of chemo and radiation therapy prior to surgery.

So that's one benefit.

very important mechanism and perhaps the most compelling.

Once the tumor is surgically removed, you're no longer concerned about the primary tumor.

You're concerned that a small number of cancer cells have been shed from the primary tumor and might spread throughout the body.