Dana-Farber researchers explore how lifestyle choices may help reduce cancer risk and improve outcomes
February 2, 2026
By Linda Wang
Andrea Antino was living a healthy, balanced life. She'd been a vegetarian for 30 years, exercised regularly, and juggled a full schedule with her husband and three kids. So when a routine colonoscopy at age 50 revealed stage 3 colon cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes, she was stunned.
"I had no symptoms," Antino said. "It was a complete shock."
During treatment, Antino wondered whether there were things she could do to help prevent her cancer from coming back. With the help of a nutritionist and her Dana-Farber care team, she learned about evidence suggesting links between lifestyle factors – such as diet and exercise – and colon cancer.
With her treatments working to get her into remission, Antino made simple lifestyle changes to help optimize her diet to reduce her intake of foods that have been linked to inflammation – things like ultraprocessed foods and refined carbs. She included more whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans. She also continued to exercise, incorporating both aerobic and strength training exercise. Five years after her diagnosis, Antino remains cancer-free.
Her experience reflects a growing understanding in cancer research: Chronic inflammation may increase a person’s risk of developing certain cancers, and targeting that inflammation may help prevent cancers from coming back or developing in the first place. At Dana-Farber, researchers are uncovering how simple lifestyle interventions, from following an anti-inflammatory diet to losing weight and increasing physical activity, may help cool the persistent inflammation that fuels cancer.
"We know that having a sedentary lifestyle, being obese, and consuming a poorer quality diet all lead to higher levels of inflammation in the body," said Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH, associate chief of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Dana-Farber, who is Antino's oncologist. "We're interested in the role of modifiable factors and what patients can take on themselves to try and decrease their risk of cancer."
We know that having a sedentary lifestyle, being obese, and consuming a poorer quality diet all lead to higher levels of inflammation in the body. We're interested in the role of modifiable factors and what patients can take on themselves to try and decrease their risk of cancer.
How Chronic Inflammation Fuels Cancer
Inflammation is part of the body's natural defense against an injury or infection. When you get a cut or catch a cold, your immune system sends an army of specialized cells to help fight off potential pathogens. This temporary, or acute, inflammation can show up as redness and swelling, or in the case of a serious infection, the inflammation can cause fever, aches, and pains. Once the threat has passed, the immune cells recede and the inflammation subsides.
But what happens when the threats persist day in and day out? Research has shown that obesity and lifestyle factors, such as consuming a diet rich in processed foods and added sugar, can keep the immune system activated at a low level all the time.
"This kind of chronic inflammatory environment can provide some of the soil that helps cancer to grow," said Sara Char, MD, a clinical fellow in hematology and oncology at Dana-Farber.
Colorectal cancer is one of the types most strongly linked to diet and chronic inflammation, said Ng. "It makes sense because whatever you are ingesting into your body comes into direct contact with the inside mucosal lining of the colon."
A diet high in red meat and processed sugars can stimulate the insulin signaling pathway, which can lead to more rapid growth of colorectal cancer cells, she explained. Poor quality diets, which are often associated with a higher body mass index, can also shift the balance of gut bacteria in the microbiome.
"Microorganisms in our microbiome are directly shaped by our diets," Ng said. "When there is an imbalance of harmful microbes, that can increase levels of inflammation in the body."
Inflammation in the colon: Chronic immune activity in the gut lining can help create conditions that allow colorectal cancer to grow.
Improving Outcomes With an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Anti-inflammatory diets rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and lean proteins, appear to have protective effects among people with colorectal cancer.
Last year, Ng and Char presented results from a cohort of patients with stage III colon cancer participating in a phase 3 clinical trial of post-operative chemotherapy who self-reported diet during chemotherapy and 6 months after completing chemotherapy. The researchers showed that people treated for stage 3 colorectal cancer who had a pattern of consuming anti-inflammatory foods lived longer than those who regularly ate proinflammatory foods. The best outcomes were seen among people who not only consumed an anti-inflammatory diet but also engaged in high levels of physical activity (at least 150 minutes a week).
"We don't completely understand how certain foods might cause inflammation or how they might protect against it, but the idea that we could distill one's diet into a pattern that can predict inflammation is pretty novel," said Char.
Ng pointed out that the dietary studies conducted so far have been observational in nature and, thus, can only reveal associations, not causation. The next step would be to conduct a randomized clinical trial, the gold standard in establishing causality between an intervention and an outcome.
"Then you could collect blood samples, stool samples, and tumor samples to better understand the biological mechanisms by which these diets seem to work," said Ng.
Choosing whole foods – fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans – can help support an anti-inflammatory diet linked to better outcomes in colorectal cancer.
Meanwhile, Ng continues to study other approaches to reducing inflammation, such as through aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and supplementation with vitamin D.
Another area of active investigation is in understanding the role of inflammation in the rising incidence of colon cancer in people younger than age 50, said Ng. "We do think environmental factors, such as diet and lifestyle, as well as obesity, are at the top of the list for why this may be happening."
In the SOLARIS trial, Ng has found that adding high-dose vitamin D to standard treatment for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer delayed disease progression among patients with left-sided colorectal tumors, but not those with right-sided tumors.
"That's an interesting finding because young-onset colorectal cancer is mostly on the left side of the colon," Ng said. "I'm working to better understand why vitamin D may be beneficial in patients with left-sided tumors but not right-sided tumors."
Effects of Weight Loss and Physical Activity
Researchers at Dana-Farber are also exploring how physical activity and weight loss can impact inflammatory pathways.
"Obesity is a risk factor for many cancers but one of the leading ideas is that it's the pro-inflammatory state of the adipose tissues that increases the incidence of cancer or accelerates the progression of cancer," said Bruce M. Spiegelman, PhD, a researcher and the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Professor of Cell Biology and Medicine at Dana-Farber.
In 1993, Spiegelman and his colleagues showed that obesity in mice was associated with the production of inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). The following year, they showed that people who were obese also produced inflammatory cytokines in their adipose tissues.
Jennifer A. Ligibel, MD, director of Dana-Farber's Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies and Healthy Living, has been studying the impact of weight loss on breast cancer recurrence through the ongoing Breast Cancer Weight Loss (BWEL) clinical trial. In 2024, she presented data showing that a telephone-based weight loss intervention led to significant improvements in inflammatory biomarkers associated with breast cancer recurrence.
Ligibel also led a window of opportunity trial that enrolled women with newly diagnosed breast cancer and tested the effect of exercising in the time between cancer diagnosis and surgery on the tumor tissue.
“We were able to show that exercise actually increased the activity of the immune system in the tumor," Ligibel said. “It did this by activating inflammation in a way that was drawing the immune system into the tumor.”
Meanwhile, Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt, MD, MPH, chief clinical research officer at Dana-Farber, has been studying the association of inflammatory biomarkers with survival among people with colorectal cancer.
In a 2023 study of 1,494 patients with stage III colon cancer, Meyerhardt and his colleagues found that patients with high levels of inflammatory biomarkers were more likely to experience a recurrence and death than those with lower levels of these biomarkers. A 2024 follow-up study showed that physical activity can partially offset this risk, suggesting that inflammation is a modifiable factor that patients can control.
Holistic Healing
As for Antino, she's happy to have regained control of her life, and it wasn't such a heavy lift. "I think people feel overwhelmed by making changes to their diet," she said. "But it's the little things that you can do to really make a difference."
Instead of the breads and pastas she used to eat, Antino now eats things like cooked vegetables, avocados, eggs, sauerkraut, arugula, oatmeal, and some beans. Her meals keep her full and she feels great.
For her patients, Ng recommends the Mediterranean diet, which maximizes fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, and whole grains, and minimizes red meat, refined grains, and sugar-sweetened beverages. And Meyerhardt recommends that patients engage in at least 30 minutes of physical activity that raises the heart rate most days per week (or 150 minutes a week).
These lifestyle changes can lead to other health benefits as well, Ligibel noted. "The nice thing about lifestyle interventions, like losing weight or exercising more, is that they do not just impact inflammation, they impact a variety of different and related pathways," she said.
Antino has seen this first-hand, as other problems she had been experiencing have also resolved. "I was a horrible sleeper prior to my diagnosis, but now I can sleep six, seven hours straight," she said. "That’s huge in healing, too."