Spatio-temporal dependency of radiotherapy induced cardiac toxicity in a novel preclinical model

Radiotherapy is an excellent treatment for many types of cancer and about half of all patients can be cured by its use. Despite its success, radiotherapy can result in harmful side effects which can have severe consequences on the quality of life and survival of patients following treatment. In particular, patients who receive chest radiotherapy for different cancers may develop unwanted side effects in the heart which can be life threatening.

In this project, we will investigate different strategies that may be capable of minimizing the effects of radiotherapy by optimising radiotherapy is delivered. This will focus on avoiding structures in the heart that are very sensitive to radiation and will use a new technique to deliver radiotherapy at very high dose rates called FLASH-RT. We will use this information to design better ways of delivering radiotherapy that will reduce harmful effects in the heart, allowing even higher doses of radiotherapy to delivered which could improve outcomes for patients.