Background Aerobic exercise has been shown to slow tumor progression in rodents and humans, but the mechanisms behind this effect are still unclear. Here we show that aerobic exercise in the form of chronic endurance training suppresses tumor recruitment of FoxP3 + Treg cells thus enhancing antitumor immune efficiency. Methods Adult wild-type and athymic BALB/c female mice were endurance-trained for 8 weeks. Circulating leukocytes as well as muscle and liver mtDNA copy number were compared to aged-matched concurrent sedentary controls to establish systemic effects. 4 T1 murine mammary tumor cells were injected subcutaneously to the 4th mammary pad at the end of the training period. Tumor growth and survival rates were compared, together with antitumor immune response. Results Exercised wild-type had 17% slower growth rate, 24% longer survival, and 2-fold tumor-CD + 8/FoxP3 + ratio than sedentary controls. Exercised athymic BALB/c females showed no difference in tumor growth or survival rates when compared to sedentary controls. Conclusions Cytotoxic T cells are a significant factor in endurance exercise-induced suppression of tumor growth. Endurance exercise enhances antitumor immune efficacy by increasing intratumoral CD8 + /FoxP3 + ratio. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12885-019-5745-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Recent suggestions to supply quantum mechanics (QM) with realistic foundations by reformulating it in light of quantum information theory (QIT) are examined and are found wanting by pointing to a basic conceptual problem that QIT itself ignores, namely, the measurement problem. Since one cannot ignore the measurement problem and at the same time pretend to be a realist, as they stand, the suggestions to reformulate QM in light of QIT are nothing but instrumentalism in disguise. 1. For an accessible textbook on QIT see Nielsen and Chuang 2000.

A remarkable theorem by Clifton, Bub and Halvorson (2003) (CBH) characterizes quantum theory in terms of information-theoretic principles. According to Bub (2004Bub ( , 2005) the philosophical significance of the theorem is that quantum theory should be regarded as a "principle" theory about (quantum) information rather than a "constructive" theory about the dynamics of quantum systems. Here we criticize Bub's principle approach arguing that if the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics remains intact then there is no escape route from solving the measurement problem by constructive theories. We further propose a (Wigner-type) thought experiment that we argue demonstrates that quantum mechanics on the information-theoretic approach is incomplete.

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