Charles Ryan: Hello from PCF 2019. I’m delighted to be joined by Dr. June Chan, who is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Urology, where she is the Stephen and Christine Bird Safeway distinguished professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She also holds the title of Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
So you have a study that’s called “Eat, Move, Sleep” for men with prostate cancer. And I think I know what it involves, by the title, but tell us about it.
June Chan: Sure. So we are launching a brand new digital cohort study that is focused on cancer survivorship. The vision for this is actually, to give you some background, I’ve worked in the area of diet, lifestyle, and prostate cancer for 20 years now and really thinking that this is great, but we still are limited in our data. And what data do we have about usual habits after diagnosis and what prevents progression and death, and not just in prostate cancer, but in cancer survivors broadly.
So our long-term vision for this study was actually to develop a cohort comprised of cohorts where the subgroups may be defined by different cancer types, different cancer sites, or different cancer mutations. So it was really trying to set forth the premise upon which you could tailor things based on different features. And so right now, we’re just launching a pilot focused in people with prostate, colorectal, or bladder cancer. We are aiming to be open in early 2020. So it will be a digital cohort study where the focus is to collect data on diet, exercise, sleep, and other usual lifestyle practices. Hence the name “Eat, Move, Sleep”.
We wanted to keep it very simple. As a digital study, it will be open broadly. So it can be open nationally. People anywhere could potentially enroll. And so this initial phase is really feasibility, like will people with cancer, that age group, will they join a study like this, fill out the surveys, et cetera, and stay engaged in the process? But we really want to get out the message that for us to advance this science, we really need more data right now.
Charles Ryan: Yeah. So there’s a lot of data on moving exercise.
June Chan: Yeah.
Charles Ryan: Quite a bit of data on nutrition.
June Chan: Yeah.
Charles Ryan: How did sleep get in there? Not that it’s unimportant, but what … Are their data?
June Chan: Well, so there are different data coming out from different cancer subtypes like breast cancer, a little bit in prostate cancer, looking at melatonin levels, which you can measure in urine for example, and potential associations with cancer outcomes generally suggesting, as one would expect, right? So good sleep hygiene might have a benefit, certainly on mood, potentially on other things. And another reason to include sleep in there is it is another thing with a digital cohort where potentially if you have a wearable-
Charles Ryan: It can collect the data.
June Chan: Yeah, you can collect the data easily. So the platform upon which this is being built already has a Fitbit integration and Fitbit does activity and sleep.
Charles Ryan: So the trial is called “Eat, Move, Sleep”, and viewers can look it up online and read more about it.
June Chan: Yes, yes. On our UCSF website early 2020: “Eat, Move, Sleep”.
Charles Ryan: Excellent, great.