Roswell Park Experts Present Evidence to Help Clinicians Advise Breast Cancer Survivors About Lifestyle Choices

Breast cancer survivors rely on healthcare providers for information about their diagnosis and treatment, but when it comes to questions about modifiable lifestyle factors that could affect their outcomes and quality of life, the answers aren’t always as clear. With “Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll,” a special session at the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, two Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center experts aim to cut through the confusion and conflicting evidence to help providers deliver sound advice.

Moderated by Christine Ambrosone, PhD, the Jayne and Phil Hubbell Family Endowed Chair in Cancer Prevention and Chair of the Department of Cancer Prevention and Control, the session featured faculty from several cancer centers addressing such topics as exercise, the use of cannabis and dietary supplements, sexual health, and eating and drinking. Rikki Cannioto, PhD, EdD, MS, Assistant Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cancer Prevention and Control at Roswell Park, discussed “Exercise During Cancer Treatment: The Evidence and the Message.” An exercise physiologist and epidemiologist, Dr. Cannioto focuses her research on this field.

Dr. Cannioto familiarized attendees with a 2022 report from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) showing that exercising during cancer treatment reduces fatigue, anxiety, depression and treatment side effects while improving sleep, quality of life, cardiorespiratory and muscle fitness and physical functioning. She also presented an overview of both published and unpublished preliminary data from Roswell Park studies demonstrating that patients who follow the Physical Activity Guidelines (PAGs) issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during and after a breast cancer diagnosis have a 49% lower mortality rate and 31% reduced risk of disease recurrence.

Despite exercise recommendations issued by the American Cancer Society, American Institute for Cancer Research and other national organizations, Dr. Cannioto notes, fewer than 15% of cancer survivors in the U.S. meet the CDC’s exercise guidelines, which state that all adults, including those with chronic disease, should engage in moderate-intensity physical activity at least 150 minutes per week and muscle-strengthening activity two days a week.

“As part of oncology visits with patients who are in treatment with the intent of trying to cure the disease, oncology providers should assess patients’ exercise behaviors and recommend that they exercise,” she says. “And because there’s no minimum number of minutes per day or steps per day needed to achieve the health benefits of exercise, if patients cannot meet the minimum guidelines due to physical limitations, they should be encouraged to at least move more and sit less — an achievable goal — to improve their outcomes.”

Poster spotlight sessions

Roswell Park presentations at SABCS 2024 feature new findings to be highlighted in poster spotlight sessions:

• PS4-07, Residual disease after HER2 inhibition is driven by a primary tumor subpopulation expressing an ERBB2-low associated transcriptional program — presented Wednesday, Dec. 11, from 7-7:30 a.m. CST, by Vittal Kurisetty, PhD, a scientist with Roswell Park’s Department of Medicine breast oncology team. Sheheryar Kabraji, BMBCh, Chief of Breast Medicine at Roswell Park, is senior author on that work as well as another study presented by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Roswell Park team: PS14-07, Spatial transcriptomics of matched breast cancer brain metastases and primary tumors identifies a brain-specific immune-suppressive transcriptional program.
• PS15-05, Breast Cancer Patients with High-Risk Disease Characteristics Have Proportionately Higher Risk of Mortality from Non-Breast-Cancer-Related Causes in Both Non-Metastatic and Metastatic Disease — to be presented by Varsha Gupta, MD, Assistant Professor of Oncology, Department of Medicine at Roswell Park, in the Survivorship — Biomarker Predictors and Other Survival-Associated Factors session, Thursday Dec. 12, from 7 to 7:30 a.m. CST in Room 221 ABC of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. Shipra Gandhi, MD, Associate Professor of Oncology, is senior author on this abstract.

Featured poster abstracts

Also presenting Roswell Park-led research on breast cancer at this year’s SABCS meeting are the following experts:

• Kriti Ahuja, MBBS, P1-10-30: Pulmonary vein thrombi in metastatic breast cancer: a management dilemma; P3-01-04: Racial and ethnic disparities in the development of second primary solid tumor malignancies in breast cancer survivors; and P3-01-10: Racial and ethnic disparities in the development of hematological second primary malignancies in breast cancer survivors
• Malak Alharbi, MBBS, P1-08-11: Incidence and Factors Predicting Survival in Inflammatory Breast Cancer: An Updated SEER Analysis 
• Jayasree Krishnan, MD, P3-03-08: Clinical Characteristics of Male Breast Cancer by Race and Factors Predicting Survival: An updated analysis and P5-02-04: Factors Predicting Transition to Independent Grants among NIH K awardees in Breast Oncology 
• Mrinalini Ramesh, DO, and Yasmin Fakhari-Tehrani, DO, P3-01-22: Pilot Feasibility Study of ctDNA Testing in Breast Cancer and its Association with Pain, Stress and Anxiety 
• Zunairah Shah, MBBS, P2-02-24: Evaluating ChatGPT as an educational resource for patients with Breast cancer: A preliminary investigation and P5-10-27: Incidence, risk factors and survival outcomes of Breast Cancer Brain Metastasis: a population-level SEER analysis
• Agnieszka Witkiewicz, MD, Professor of Oncology and Personalized Medicine, P2-05-16: Interrogating serum thymidine kinase activity with CDK4/6 inhibitor-based therapies: real-world experience in the metastatic and adjuvant setting 

Online abstracts are available in the meeting program. Underway through Dec. 13, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium brings together physicians and researchers from around the world to share the latest information about many aspects of the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer and premalignant breast disease.