Dr. Kerry Courneya

Looking at PSA levels can be an indication of how much cancer there is in the prostate.

So we showed that this high-intensity exercise lowered PSA levels.

And then we also looked at these prostate cancer cells in a Petri dish, just an in vitro model, where we exposed those prostate cancer cells to the serum of the men who exercised or the serum of the men who didn't exercise.

And we showed that exposing them to the serum in the men who exercise reduced the growth of those prostate cancer cells.

suggesting that there's something that exercise is doing, and we think it's the anti-inflammatory, the insulin IGF immune system effects that are slowing the growth of these prostate cancer cells.

So this is a very exciting area because many of these guys who are on active surveillance ultimately will require treatments.

So if you can delay the need for treatments or prevent treatments, you can substantially improve their quality of life.

So a very promising exercise in intervention in that clinical setting.

I think it's the evidence suggesting that high intensity activate activates more of these biological changes.

So I think of it kind of as stirring the biological soup, right?

The body's got all these biological processes, and the more intense the exercise, more of these biological changes get stirred up.

So you're going to send more immune cells into the peripheral blood, more of the changes in insulin and IGF, more of the anti-inflammatory markers.

So there seems to be a dose intensity effect on some of these biological changes.

And because we're targeting biological changes as opposed to functional changes, we want to go with what we think is the optimal exercise prescription for really driving biological changes that might be relevant for cancer growth.

Yeah, so many of these guys are quite motivated to do something for themselves.

So that's one of the big motivating factors, right?

Waiting around just for treatments or just getting the surveillance, which is regular PSA screenings and biopsies and those types of things.

So many of these patients

cancer diagnosis can be a bit of a wake-up call.

It can be a bit of a teachable moment in the sense that, oh, you know, I am not immortal.