Yale Cancer Center Members Participate in American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting
Yale Cancer Center participation in the annual ASTRO meeting has increased steadily over the last several years; this year most of the faculty members and six of the residents will be in attendance at the premier radiation oncology meeting. The meeting is scheduled for November 1 – 5 in Chicago, IL.
Yale physicians submitted 17 abstracts to the meeting and 14 of them were chosen for a poster and/or presentation session. Additionally, 11 faculty members from Yale were included in the abstract selection process in preparation for the meeting.
Lynn Wilson, MD, MPH, Professor, Vice Chairman, and Clinical Director of the Department of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale School of Medicine, is vice chairman of the meeting’s scientific program and chairman elect for a three-year term beginning in 2011. In addition to his leadership responsibilities, Dr. Wilson is also responsible for the poster program and the poster walk sessions, which feature notable professors in radiation oncology presenting and discussing the posters chosen for display at the meeting. He is also chair of the publications and journal committee and chair of the editor-in-chief task force selection committee for a new journal that ASTRO plans to launch, Practical Radiation Oncology.
Peter Glazer, MD, PhD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Therapeutic Radiology, will present Targeting DNA Repair for Cancer Therapy during the meeting. His lecture will highlight recent work identifying a novel inhibitor of DNA repair that sensitizes breast cancer cells to conventional cancer chemotherapy.
Bryan Chang, MD, Assistant Professor of Therapeutic Radiology, and Dhwani Gandhi, MD were selected to give an oral presentation on his submitted abstract, Clinicopathologic Analysis Of Gross Tumor Size And Microscopic Extension In Liver Metastases From Colorectal Cancer (CRC): Implications For Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT). Their project studied liver metastases from colon and rectal cancers and correlating the pathology to the extent of the disease as measured by preoperative imaging studies. This knowledge will improve the ability to target with stereotactic body radiation therapy.
During the session on breast cancer, Meena Moran, MD, Assistant Professor of Therapeutic Radiology, will present Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) as a prognostic marker for local relapse in early-stage breast cancer patients treated with breast conservation therapy (BCT). The study is the first to assess the prognostic value of VEGF with the end-point of local relapse in early-stage breast cancer patients treated with BCT.
In addition to the presentations of Yale research, Dr. Wilson will be moderating the clinical trials session and Dr. Glazer and Roy Decker, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Therapeutic Radiology, will lead poster walk sessions.
For more information on ASTRO, please go to www.astro.org