Elizabeth Hillman

Payment for services (e.g., consulting fees, honoraria, paid authorship)

Flexible Tools for Pre-Clinical Studies to Answer Key Questions UnderlyingHeavy-Ion Radiotherapy

PROJECT NARRATIVE There is currently strong interest in the introduction of heavy-ion radiation therapy to the U.S., largely based on the experience of carbon-ion radiotherapy in Japan and Germany, where very encouraging survival rates have been reported for a number of hard-to-treat cancers including non-operable locally-advanced pancreatic cancer - when most patients are dying from distant metastases, well away from the primary tumor. So as well as producing local effects to the primary tumor, heavy-ion radiation therapy may also be inducing anti-cancer effects at body locations distant from the primary tumor - but what is not known are the biological mechanisms causing these beneficial long range effects. There are currently no appropriate tools to address these questions and so in this BRP, and leveraging from the unique technologies and skillsets at the Radiological Research Accelerator Facility and the Laboratory for Functional Optical Imaging, novel tools will be developed to study and understand long-range radiation-induced biological effects.