In the latest issue of Cancer Research Update, AICR’s biweekly email newsletter on the science of cancer prevention, treatment and survival, we asked cancer researchers and educators to answer one, simple question:

What do we know today that we didn’t know just 10 years ago?

Their answers might surprise you – they surprised us.  Although epidemiologists, clinicians, basic researchers and health professionals differ on what they believe to be the most important achievement in the past ten years, they agreed on one thing:  It’s never been clearer that diet, physical activity and a healthy weight all play an important protective role.

Check out the article – and subscribe to Cancer Research Update today.

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Very pleased to see this story on our recently updated expert report in yesterday’s PARADE Magazine.

Dr. Ranit Mishori‘s Stay Healthy column reminds readers that the recent controversy over mammograms should not distract women from the convincing evidence that diet, weight and physical activity make a big difference in lowering risk.

Includes a nice quote from AICR Director of Research Susan Higginbotham, PhD, RD.

A great way to start the week!

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Dr. June Stevens is the American Institute for Cancer Research/World Cancer Research Fund Distinguished Professor at the AICR/WCRF Institute for the Advanced Study of Diet, Nutrition and Cancer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She oversees AICR’s Marilyn Gentry Fellowship Program, which seeks to develop tomorrow’s leaders in nutrition-cancer research.

Last week, she chaired a session at the 2009 AICR Research Conference called, “From Policy to Action in Cancer Prevention.” We caught up with her at lunch to ask her about the session, and about the research that’s revealing how best to translate the findings from laboratory studies and clinical trials into practical, actionable advice for the public.

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At our Research Conference last week, we were honored to have Kathryn H. Schmitz, PhD, MPH, FACSM give a talk on strategies for promoting physical activity among cancer survivors.

It was Dr. Schmitz’s PAL (Physical Activity and Lymphedema) Trial that showed that survivors with lymphedema (swelling of the limbs) could benefit from gradual, closely supervised weight training – a finding that challenged the conventional wisdom that lymphedema sufferers should avoid weight-bearing exercise.  She published her findings in the August issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.  We profiled this research in the latest issue of AICR’s ScienceNow newsletter.

But that doesn’t mean that women who have, or who are at high risk for lymphedema, should just head to the gym and start lifting away.  We caught up with Dr. Schmitz at lunch, and she talked about two online resources to help these women get the guidance they need.

www.lymphnet.org – The National Lymphedema Network. Find physical therapists trained in lymphedema issues.

www.strengthandcourage.net – Order a DVD on exercise after breast cancer surgery – includes many of the exercises used in Dr. Schmitz’s PAL trial.

For more general advice about diet and physical activity during and after cancer, don’t forget to check out the AICR/New York Presbyterian Hospital DVD, Food For the Fight: Guidelines for Healthy Nutrition During and After Cancer Treatment

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At last night’s poster session, we caught up with Dr. Laura P. Hale of Duke University Medical Center.  Dr. Hale’s using an AICR grant to study bromelain, a combination of enzymes found in the stems of pineapples.  Specifically, she’s adding fresh pineapple juice to mouse diets to test its effect on the kind of inflammation that has been linked to colon cancer. 

As you’ll see, she’s getting some very promising results.

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The day before his presentation on physical activity and cancer prevention, AICR grantee Henry Thompson, PhD, of Colorado State University shared his thoughts about what makes the AICR Research Conference unique, and how meetings like ours can spark new ways of scientific thinking.

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Barbara J. Rolls, PhD is a Penn State researcher whose work studying the factors that influence how much people eat — and why — helped shape the development of AICR’s New American Plate.

She spoke to us briefly about the AICR Conference session called “From Policy to Action in Cancer Prevention.”  (She also had some nice things to say about AICR.)

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Peter Greenwald, MD, DrPH, is the director of the Division of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute.  He spoke at the 20th Annual AICR Research Conference on the future of dietary intervention studies.

Here, he talks about what we know about cancer prevention – and what may lie ahead.

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We stopped Steven Clinton, MD, PhD, in the hall, just after he chaired the opening plenary session on intervention trials.

(Sorry about the shaky cam. Hey, this is all new to us, too.)

Dr. Clinton is both a cancer researcher at Ohio State University and a practicing oncologist  the James Cancer Hospital.

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