Events

Oxygen-Guided Radiation Therapy: Comparing EPR pO2 and FMISO PET Hypoxia Imaging

Moderated by: Dr. Paul Grippo, University of Illinois Cancer Center

​About the Speaker: Inna Gertsenshteyn is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago with co-advisors Dr. Howard Halpern and Dr. Chin-Tu Chen. Her dissertation focuses on multi-modal imaging of tumor hypoxia with EPRI, FMISO PET, and DCE-MRI to improve image-guided radiotherapy. She has won first place at two Young Investigator Award sessions for her work, and is a recipient of the F31 National Research Service Award from the NIH. Before graduate school, Inna was a Senior Image Analyst at Invicro, a global research partner to pharmaceutical and biotech organizations to enhance drug discovery and development. She is currently at Biogen as a Co-op in Late Discovery Imaging focusing on drug development for neuromuscular diseases. Inna plans to graduate in late summer of 2022, and is currently exploring post-doctoral and industry positions

About the Webinar: Hypoxia is a major source of tumor resistance to radiation. Previous studies in the Halpern Lab at the University of Chicago using low-frequency pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance imaging (LF-EPRI) showed significantly improved local tumor control when directing a radiation boost to hypoxic tumor subregions. Those studies were completed in two preclinical tumor types: FSa fibrosarcomas and MCa-4 mammary adenocarcinomas. The presented study was repeated in SCC7 squamous cell carcinomas using both the LF-EPRI system and the higher-frequency JIVA-25™ system from O2M Technologies. Here we will show improved results using the JIVA-25™ for oxygen-guided radiation therapy. We will also compare hypoxia imaging between pO2 EPRI and 18F-Fluoromisonidazole positron emission tomography (FMISO PET), a more clinically-relevant imaging modality, to review how EPRI can help inform the accuracy of PET hypoxia radiotracers with a hybrid PET/EPR imaging system.