| Radiation Medicine Program - Research Bites
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Your source for the latest in RMP research
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Radiation therapists in RMP play a critical role in our program’s research endeavors, with many conducting practice-changing research with profound impact on patient care. In 2019, RMP’s radiation therapists reached significant milestones with their 200th publication with a therapist as senior author and also exceeded $500,000 in successful research grant funding.
In RMP, we have a highly specialized group of radiation therapists known as CSRTs (Clinical Specialist Radiation Therapists). CSRTs are experts in their area of specialization, bringing advanced clinical and technical skills to the multidisciplinary radiation team. In this issue, learn how our CSRTs are leading the way in advancing care for our patients.
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Grace Lee
APRT(T), MHSc
Clinical Specialist Radiation Therapist – Breast Site Group, Princess Margaret
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Peer-review is an important process, whereby a multidisciplinary team of radiation medicine professionals evaluate individual patient radiation treatment plans for both safety and effectiveness. As an integral member of the breast site group, Grace Lee has been involved in the development and operationalization of the breast site radiotherapy (RT) peer-review rounds. In partnership with other radiation oncologists, physicists and therapists, Grace developed a streamlined and systematic approach to collate patient data, which reduced the likelihood of errors and was found to be more efficient. “The collection of breast patient data into a database allows the site group to have quick assessment of feasibility for specific research questions,” says Grace. "My hope is that a systematic approach in collating patient data will not only be used for RT treatment peer-review, but also lay the foundation for a breast cancer RT database on which our site group can build an anthology of outcomes for breast cancer RT patients treated at the Princess Margaret." Read the full interview.
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Vickie Kong
MRT(T), MSc
Clinical Specialist Radiation
Therapist –
GU Site Group,
Princess Margaret
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Adaptive treatment strategies are particularly important for treating patients with bladder cancer, since the volume and position of the bladder may vary substantially during a course of RT. Recognized as an expert in the field, Vickie Kong has investigated the efficacy of three different adaptive strategies for bladder cancer and evaluated their associated resource burden. Vickie’s research encompasses different types of genitourinary cancers, with a focus on optimizing treatment quality with the application of advanced planning and image guidance technology. Recently, Vickie brought her expertise to the MR-Linac team, where she collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to develop an adaptive workflow for prostate stereotactic body radiotherapy. "I am glad to be part of the dose reconstruction and the MR-Linac team where I can learn from my fellow colleagues and apply my clinical expertise in developing workflows that can improve quality of RT,” she says. Next, Vickie hopes to develop real-time tracking tools to measure the progress of treatment. “What are the changes we see on the images? What dose does the patient receive and what toxicity does the patient experience? How did the treatment affect the patient’s quality of life? This information would be useful for both the clinical teams and patients to make an informed decision on the type of intervention that would be the most appropriate.” Read the full interview.
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Joanna Javor
MRT(T), MHSc
Clinical Specialist Radiation Therapist – PROP,
Princess Margaret
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Palliative radiation therapy provides symptom relief to patients with advanced and metastatic cancers to improve their quality of life. However, the treatment received by palliative patients may be limited due to the nature of their conditions (e.g. pain, immobility). Joanna Javor is working on several research projects to improve the quality of care for palliative patients, which include using innovative technology to improve the amount of radiation dose that reaches the tumour and reduce doses to normal tissues. “This is critically important in this patient population as the goal of RT is to improve quality of life,” says Joanna. Another project involves analyzing the impact of radiation dose when patients cannot be treated in ideal treatment positions due to significant pain. “I believe that patients facing a terminal illness who are suffering in some way and can potentially benefit from RT deserve the best care we can possibly offer. This can only happen through research.” Read the full interview
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Lukovic et al. developed an MRI contouring atlas for upper abdominal organs-at-risk (OAR) - a useful reference that may help to improve uniformity in contouring and OAR dose calculation.
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Weersink et al. examined the feasibility of using electromagnetic tracking to monitor both endoscope and applicator positions, for the placement of HDR brachytherapy luminal applicators in the esophagus and lungs.
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Barry A, Murphy T, Prince R, May T, Zimmermann C, Elliott M. Time to 'buddy up' - simple strategies to support oncologists during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adv Radiat Oncol. 2020 Apr 20.
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Bissonnette JP, Neath C, Hart M. Introducing operator characteristic curves to define appropriate frequency of quality control tests: a case study involving whole breast radiotherapy image guidance. Phys Med. 2020 Jan 9;69:275-280.
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Glicksman RM, Metser U, Valliant J, Chung PW, Fleshner NE, Bristow RG, Green D, Finelli A, Hamilton R, Stanescu T, Hussey D, Catton C, Gospodarowicz M, Warde P, Bayley A, Breen S, Vines D, Jaffray DA, Berlin A. [18F]DCFPyL PET-MRI/CT for unveiling a molecularly defined oligorecurrent prostate cancer state amenable for curative-intent ablative therapy: study protocol for a phase II trial.
BMJ Open. 2020 Apr 22;10(4):e035959.
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Huang SH. What we know so far (as of March 26, 2020) about COVID-19 - an MRT point of view.
J Med Imaging Radiat Sci. 2020 Apr 1.
- Kang S, Caissie A, Kassam Z, Ingledew PA, Alfieri J, Parliament M, Bezjak A, Giuliani M. Promoting career selection through a comprehensive enrichment experience: a review of the Canadian radiation oncology summer studentship. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2020 Jan 24.
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Li W, Gillan C, Carpino-Rocca C, Keller H, Laperriere N, Coolens C. A multidisciplinary approach to implement image-guided craniospinal irradiation.
J Med Imaging Radiat Sci. 2020 Mar 31.
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Lukovic J, Alfaraj FA, Mierzwa ML, Marta GN, Xu W, Su J, Moraes FY, Huang SH, Bratman SV, O'Sullivan B, Kim JJ, Ringash JG, Waldron J, de Almeida JR, Goldstein DP, Casper KA, Rosko AJ, Spector ME, Kowalski LP, Hope A, Hosni A. Development and validation of a clinical prediction-score model for distant metastases in major salivary gland carcinoma. Ann Oncol. 2020 Feb;31(2):295-301.
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Ntoukas SM, Ritchie T, Awrey S, Hodgson DC, Laperriere N, Yee R, Ramaswamy V, Millar BA, Becker N, Tsang DS. Minimizing general anaesthetic use in paediatric radiation therapy: Reducing GA in paediatric RT. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2019 Dec 10.
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O’Sullivan B, Huang SH, Keane T, Xu W, Su J, Waldron J, Gullane P, Liu FF, Warde P, Payne D, Tong L, Cummings B. Durable therapeutic gain despite competing mortality in long-term follow-up of a randomized hyperfractionated radiotherapy trial for locally advanced head and neck cancer. Clin Transl Radiat Oncol. 21:69-76, 2020.
- Perdrizet J, D'Souza D, Skliarenko J, Ang M, Barbera L, Gutierrez E, Ravi A, Tanderup K, Warde P, Chan KKW, Isaranuwatchai W, Milosevic M. A cost-utility analysis of magnetic resonance (MR) guided brachytherapy versus two dimensional and computed tomography (CT) guided brachytherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2020 Mar 10.
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Taylor E, Zhou J, Lindsay P, Foltz W, Cheung M, Siddiqui I, Hosni A, Amir AE, Kim J, Hill RP, Jaffray DA, Hedley DW. Quantifying reoxygenation in pancreatic cancer during stereotactic body radiotherapy. Sci Rep. 2020 Jan 31;10(1):1638.
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Winter JD, Adleman J, Purdie TG, Heaton J, McNiven A, Croke J. An innovative learning tool for radiotherapy treatment plan evaluation: implementation and evaluation.
Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2020 Apr 4.
* Select publications with RMP first and/or last author. See the full list.
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Imaging data from Kwan et al. is now publicly available at The Cancer Imaging Archive. This new data collection, titled Radiomic Biomarkers in Oropharyngeal Carcinoma (OPC-Radiomics), contains radiotherapy planning CTs, RTSTRUCT gross tumor volume contours, and clinical outcomes from 606 patients with oropharynx cancer. Thank you and congratulations to the team: J Kwan, J Su, S Huang, LS Ghoraie, Wei Xu, B Chan, K Yip, M Giuliani, A Bayley, J Kim, AJ Hope, J Ringash, J Cho, A McNiven, A Hansen, D Goldstein, J de Almeida, HJ Aerts, J Waldron, B Haibe-Kains, B O’Sullivan, S Bratman, FF Liu, F Khodakarami, and K Rey-McIntyre.
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Awards and Distinctions
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Carina Feuz: Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences (JMIRS) Editor-in-Chief Top Paper 2019 Award. “Implementing workshops to improve radiation therapists’ knowledge and attitudes about sexual health issues in cancer patients”. Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists.
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Meredith Giuliani: Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) Young Educators Award.
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Rachel Glicksman: ASCO Merit Award. "Primary analysis of a phase II study of metastasis-directed ablative therapy to PSMA (18F-DCFPyL) PET-MR/CT defined oligorecurrent prostate cancer". ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation.
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Mary Gospodarowicz: International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) Gray Medal.
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Grants
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Building radiation oncology capacity through training – a demonstration project. PI: Wong R (PM). Celgene Cancer Care Links Grant Program. $97,460.
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Development and comparison of radiomics models for prognosis and monitoring. CIHR. PIs: Haibe-Kains B, Hope A. Co-Is: Bratman S, Han K, McIntosh C, Purdie T, Wang B, Xu W. $608,175.
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The Person-centered Evolution of Radiotherapy Services in ONtario (PERSON) Study. AHSC AFP, Innovation Fund. PIs: Koch CA, Velec M. $117,422.33 CAD.
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The SCF(FBXO11) - XAB2 axis mediates DNA repair and therapeutic resistance in small cell lung cancer. Project Grant, CIHR. PIs: Lok B, Raught B. Co-Is: He H, Sacher A, Tsao M. $984,555.
* Select external grants with RMP PI/co-PI. See the full list.
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Grant Resources
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