Seed Funding Program 2023
ReGaRT
Personalized radiation concepts with Response-guided adaptive radiotherapy
Coordinator
Constantin Dreher
Radiation Oncology, UMM
Detailed description
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancer in men and radiotherapy is a curative treatment for localized prostate cancer. It can be performed with various fractionation dose concepts, the intensity of the radiation over a certain period of time - depending on the stage of cancer, fractionation doses of conventional or normofractionated 2 Gy, moderately hypofractionated 3 Gy, and even ultrahypofractionated 7.25 Gy are established. Hypofractionation stands for the application of a smaller number of fractions with a larger fractional dose size, thus amongst others shortening the overall treatment time. On an individual patient level, potential advantages of a specific dose concept over the others will be identified and investigated. Therefore, this translation-oriented research project is aimed at paving the way for an interdisciplinary implementation of personalized radiotherapy, taking into account the individual response to the respective dose concepts.
The multimodal, multiparametric imaging during and for radiotherapy will be investigated in terms of whether a prediction of response can be realized. In addition, image-based analysis will be complemented by advanced oncological imaging such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans in order to enable the long-term implementation of tailored fractionation dose concepts for the individual patient with prostate cancer.