A Northeastern researcher says one day oncologists may be able to write personalized exercise “prescriptions” for cancer patients that suppress tumor growth.
Jay Taylor, a second-year doctor of physical therapy student with a background in computer science, helped develop a mathematical model that attempts to quantify the relationship between exercise, immune function and cancer.
The paper, published in the Physical Biology journal, looked at models of mice running on wheels to show that increases in exercise intensity and duration decrease the proliferation of malignant cells.
“It just adds a little quantitative value and evidence to back that (idea) that exercise does work and it does work for cancer patients,” says Taylor, who worked in biotechnology before coming to Northeastern to study physical therapy.
“This is kind of the first stepping stone to creating an exercise prescription. That’s what I see in the future,” he says.
According to the paper, the team of researchers worked on a mathematical model to describe the transition of natural killer cells from inactive to active states due to exercise-induced levels of a protein called interleukin (IL) 6.
