The speaker will be Professor Timothy S Maughan, Clinical Director, Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology & Biology, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford.
Date: 17 May 2012
Time: 17.30pm
Venue: Post Graduate Medical Centre Lecture Theatre, Royal United Hospital, Bath
Abstract: Radiotherapy is a highly effective potentially curative therapy for cancer. Despite rumours of its imminent demise in the 80s and 90s, it has experienced a resurgence in profile on the basis of increasing precision in the delivery of dose into the target volume. This has reduced long term toxicities and provided the opportunity for further dose escalation and combination with existing and novel agents. Our understanding of cancer is also moving forward rapidly. The extreme heterogeneity and plasticity of metastatic cancer underlies the great challenges in identifying effective drug treatments which are able to radically alter outcomes of common cancers. We are now able to sequence the genome of individual cancers for less than £1000 and in less than a week. Functional imaging also reveals the physiological heterogeneity of cancer and has the potential to provide the insights on which we should modify our radiotherapy and possibly chemotherapy treatments. The issue is in how we rise to face these challenges and adapt longstanding approaches to meet the needs of our patients.
Following the lecture, light refreshments will be served in the Post Graduate Dining Room, all are welcome.
For more information: http://www.rob.ox.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/Tim%20Maughan/
