en
Slovenščina
Italiano
We invite you to a workshop that will be led by Dr. Damir Zubac, coordinator of the bilateral project between the University of Cologne and ZRS Koper on the topic of the role of exercise in managing chronic fatigue during anti-cancer immunotherapy.
The workshop, intended for physicians, researchers, students, and policymakers, will take place on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, at 10:30, in the library at the headquarters of ZRS Koper, Garibaldijeva 1, Koper. It will be conducted in English.
The project, coordinated by Dr. Damir Zubac, is entitled Chronic Fatigue Management in Immunotherapy: A German–Slovenian Collaboration for Precision Exercise Oncology and is funded by the Cologne International Forum.
Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is one of the most common and disabling side-effects of cancer treatment. While we know that exercise can reduce chronic fatigue in patients receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy, very little is known about how fatigue develops under acute immunotherapy treatment —and how it can be mitigated. Can exercise also play a role in this case?
This project brings together experts from the University Hospital Cologne in Germany and the Science and Research Centre Koper in Slovenia. Cologne offers a unique clinical setting where exercise therapy is fully integrated into cancer care, allowing patients to receive structured and supervised training during treatment. The Slovenian team contributes advanced tools to skeletal muscle metabolism and function, including imaging and non-invasive methods such as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), and tensiomyography (TMG). The project will explore how skeletal muscle functions during exercise in patients undergoing immunotherapy, and why some individuals develop more severe chronic fatigue than others. It also investigate how aging and physical inactivity affect muscle metabolism, and whether real-time muscle oxygenation monitoring can improve the way exercise programs are tailored to each patient.
The goals of the project are to:
- Understand the biological mechanisms behind chronic fatigue in patients receiving ICI treatment.
- Test how structured exercise programs can reduce fatigue and improve quality of life.
- Strengthen long-term, cross-border collaboration between Germany and Slovenia in the field of exercise oncology.
As part of the project, several workshops will be organized in Cologne and Koper, and the partnership will also support future EU research proposals and help establish Cologne’s integrated exercise therapy model as a leading example for supportive care in cancer across EU.
Dr. Damir Zubac is a kinesiologist and exercise physiologist, habilitated as a Senior Research Fellow and Docent in Human and Exercise Physiology in both Slovenia and Croatia. In 2022, he joined the Exercise Medicine group within the Center for Integrative Oncology at the University Hospital Cologne. His work primarily focuses on the physiological and biological mechanisms underlying oxygen transport in both healthy and diseased populations.
His contributions include 38 peer-reviewed publications indexed in Web of Science and PubMed, with over 380 citations to date. He has served as an Editorial Board Member for six journals published by Springer Nature, Sage, and Wolters Kluwer, and a panel member in the field of Biomedicine for the Croatian Science Foundation.