Pancreatic Cancer Research from the Perspective of the RTT

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer has the lowest one-year survival of any cancer in the UK. This illustrates the poor outlook suffered by patients and recognises it as a cancer of unmet need that requires further investigation. Pancreatic cancer is a global problem and according to worldwide cancer statistics, it is the 7^th top cause of cancer death. This presentation will cover a general background of ongoing pancreatic research to first highlight the bigger picture, before focussing on the current landscape of radiotherapy (RT) research for pancreatic cancer. This will be from a RTT perspective and will include a detailed case study of building a research career that investigates the many challenges of treating these patients.

RT challenges include abdominal motion that causes many uncertainties throughout the full RT pathway, and impacts image quality at each stage. Topics to be discussed will be accuracy and precision of treatment planning and delivery, acquisition of high-quality images with image guided-RT (IGRT), dealing with dose-limiting organs at risk, and determining response using advanced functional imaging protocols. The discussed issues require multi-disciplinary strategies to overcome them.