New research suggests that surviving cancer at a young age may accelerate aging in both the body and brain.
A new study finds that people who survive cancer during adolescence or early adulthood tend to show signs of aging sooner than those who never had the disease. The research points to changes not only in the body’s cells but also in brain abilities tied to memory, focus, and how quickly information is processed.
The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications. The study was led by AnnaLynn Williams, PhD, a researcher at the University of Rochester Wilmot Cancer Institute, with Kevin Krull, PhD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital serving as co-corresponding author.
Researchers at Wilmot are now exploring encouraging possibilities. Williams said that some aspects of accelerated aging may be reversible if young adults adopt healthier habits such as stopping smoking, staying physically active, improving their diet, and making other positive lifestyle changes.
“Young cancer survivors have many more decades of life to live,” she said. “So, if these accelerated aging changes are occurring early on and setting them on a different trajectory, the goal is to intervene to not only increase their lifespan but improve their quality of life.”
Links Between Biological Aging and Brain Function
Many people treated for cancer in childhood or young adulthood are in the middle of major life transitions, including completing school, launching careers, living independently, or starting families. When brain health is affected, these goals can become harder to achieve.
“It’s kind of like a perfect storm,” Williams said. “This is why we see many survivors having worse educational and employment outcomes than their siblings.”
Williams, who is also a cancer survivor, serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery and is a member of Wilmot’s Cancer Prevention and Control research program. The program is nationally recognized for its work on reducing long-term symptom burdens among cancer survivors.
The study included about 1,400 former patients treated at St. Jude. All participants were at least five years beyond their cancer treatment, and some had survived for several decades. Most had been treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or Hodgkin lymphoma.
The researchers found that signs of faster biological aging appeared across survivors regardless of the specific treatments they received as children. However, chemotherapy stood out as being linked to the most rapid aging, likely because it can alter DNA and cause widespread damage to cells and tissues.
Pinpointing When Accelerated Aging Begins
The team also discovered that cellular aging is intricately linked to brain function. For example, survivors with higher biological age (as opposed to the age on their birth certificates) struggled the most with memory and attention.
For survivors treated with radiation directly to the brain, the goal is to stop any deficits from getting worse, Williams said.
The next steps are to determine the ideal time to intervene, and that work is ongoing at Wilmot.
For example, Williams recently conducted a pilot study including tissue and cell samples collected before and after treatment from 50 people with Hodgkin lymphoma and compared them to 50 healthy peers. She collaborated with John Ashton, PhD, MBA, director of the Genomics Shared Resource at Wilmot, to analyze the data for clues to determine when accelerated aging starts. Is it during treatment? Or a few years later?
Other Wilmot investigators are conducting similar research for women with breast cancer and in older adults with leukemia, with the goal of reversing the aging. One recent study has already shown the value of exercise to reverse aging associated with cancer.
Reference: “Epigenetic age acceleration, telomere length, and neurocognitive function in long-term survivors of childhood cancer” by AnnaLynn M. Williams, Nicholas S. Phillips, Qian Dong, Matthew J. Ehrhardt, Nikesha Gilmore, Kah Poh Loh, Xiaoxi Meng, Kirsten K. Ness, Melissa M. Hudson, Leslie L. Robison, Zhaoming Wang and Kevin R. Krull, 27 November 2025, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65664-5
The National Cancer Institute funded Williams’ study.
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