PREvention CAncer through physical FITness

ongoing

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 18.1 million new cases and 9.6 million deaths in 2018, and representing the highest economic burden to modern health care systems with ~$1.16 trillion per year. Exploration of gender or race disparity in cancer susceptibility has not been common practice. Together with cancer, cardiometabolic disease are the largest contributors to the burden of chronic disease worldwide. Every year many cases of cancer seem attributable to metabolic disease. Growing evidence has firmly established that both low fitness and physical inactivity are strongly associated with many chronic conditions and all-cause mortality. Therefore, there is an urgent need to unravel whether fitness and physical activity are related to cancer. The PreCaFit project will fill the gaps in the knowledge examining the relationship between fitness, physical activity and cancer. Further, to ensure the scalability of the results, we will examine the effects of exercise on cancer biomarkers. This will produce a large impact in science and society since it will provide the first step toward feasible, effective and safe prevention strategies. The use of objective measurements and a unique set of techniques for data acquisition, the epidemiological collection in a large sample, the lab research at Stanford University (Prof. Myers), the secondments in Europe at Prof. Ekelund lab for learning data pooling and harmonization techniques, and at Prof. Riboli lab for learning about cancer epidemiology and biomarkers, and the pilot randomized controlled trial on exercise and cancer biomarkers at UGR (Prof. Ortega) place this project in pole position to address how lifestyle behaviours might mitigate cancer. To do so, the training, management skills, dissemination/exploitation and communication/outreach activities in the top-level hosts and secondment institutions ensure the scientific excellence and determination with improved career possibilities.