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Tuesday 30 August 2016

Register for Updates on Cancer and Lifestyle on 29th September in London



Medical charity the FPM is organising a one-day meeting on Updates on Cancer on 29th September at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London. 

Register online

Abstract submission online

Consultant Oncologist Professor Robert Thomas will discuss the evidence on benefits of lifestyle and nutrition after cancer, at a one-day meeting on Updates on Cancer on 29th September at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London organised by the FPM.

He said: “With 1:3 getting cancer and 3 million people living with the consequences of this disease at any one time in the UK, and the cost of care increasing, the case for developing effective, self-help initiatives has never been stronger.”

His talk “summarises the international evidence, which shows that physical activity, nutrition and other lifestyle strategies can substantially reduce the risk of relapse and minimise numerous late effects ranging from fatigue, weight gain, anxiety, hot flushes, arthralgia.”

He added that his talk will “highlight the biological processes that take place in the body after a healthy lifestyle, which can have direct and indirect anti-cancer effects. By looking only at the scientific evidence, it breaks down the myths behind which foods to avoid and which to eat more of. It discusses the risks the benefits, of mineral and vitamin supplements and highlights the potential benefits of boosting the anti-cancer polyphenols in our diet. It summarises the results of the world’s largest double blind randomised study of a polyphenol rich food supplement Pomi-T, developed and tested with the help of the UK government’s National Cancer Research Network (NCRN).”

Professor Robert Thomas is a Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals, a Professor of applied biology and exercise science Coventry University, a senior clinical tutor at Cambridge University. He is editor of the lifestyle and cancer website (Cancernet.co.uk) and designed the 1st UK approved qualification in cancer rehabilitation. He wrote the evidence review for the UK’s National Cancer Survivorship Initiative, chairs the Macmillan Cancer Support Exercise advisory committee and directs an dynamic research unit, which has designed numerous studies which been published across the world. For these, and other, efforts to improve the long term wellbeing of patients he was awarded the British Oncology Association Oncologist of the Year, the Hospital Doctor Magazine UK Doctor of the Year and the Royal College, Frank Ellis Medal.

Southampton researcher Dr Lisa Loughney will discuss the benefits of exercise for people undergoing cancer treatment. 


Neoadjuvant treatment is treatment given as a first step to shrink a tumor before the main treatment e.g. surgery or radiotherapy.

In her 2016 paper on this theme she noted that neoadjuvant cancer treatment decreases physical fitness and low levels of physical fitness are associated with poor surgical outcome. She added that exercise training can stimulate skeletal muscle adaptations, such as increased mitochondrial content and improved oxygen uptake capacity that may contribute to improving physical fitness. She has therefore evaluated the evidence in support of exercise training in people with cancer undergoing the “dual hit” of neoadjuvant cancer treatment and surgery.

Dr Loughney works in the National Institute of Health Research’s Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit at the University Hospital of Southampton’s  NHS Foundation Trust.

Wendy French will discuss her Poet-in-Residency year at the UCLH MacMillan Cancer Centre.

Working with patients, sharing in their hopes and fears, tracking the everyday endeavours of a vital medical hub, Wendy French found herself drawn into lives in which blood tests, diagnosis, chemotherapy and hope become as much part of the human experience as cappuccino and Vivaldi on the radio.

Her residency resulted in publication of ‘Thinks itself a Hawk’. In the collection, one life, that of Zipora, a Jewish woman whose origins lay in the darkest days of the twentieth century, is chosen for particular attention for its power to place everyday experience in large frames, but also for the brightness with which it reminds us that everyday life is unique and important.

Wendy French was Poet in Residence at the Macmillan Centre UCLH from April 2014-2015. Her collaboration with Jane Kirwan resulted in the book Born in the NHS, published in 2013. She won the inaugural 2010 Hippocrates Poetry and Medicine prize for the NHS section in 2010 and was awarded the Hippocrates NHS second prize in 2011. She has two chapbooks and two further collections of poetry published, Splintering the Dark (2005), and surely you know this (2009). She previously worked twenty years with children and adults with mental health problems and was head of the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital School. She has also worked with people with aphasia/dysphasia, helping them to recover their use of language through poetry.

This one day symposium will include further sessions on:
  • risk factors for cancer
  • evidence for effective strategies aimed at preventing cancer
  • medical humanities to support patients undergoing treatment for cancer