Student Project: Personalised radionuclide theranostics for cancer

The aim of this study is to develop and optimise a dosimetric framework for personalised radionuclide therapy using deep learning from patients undergoing treatment for neuroendocrine tumours and prostate cancer, to facilitate individualised treatments as a standard in practice.

The scope of this project extends across aspects of nuclear medicine, medical physics and radiation biology and will suit a student with interests in one or more of these disciplines. The student will acquire skills in image analysis and computer science methods (including deep learning) to enable personalised radiation dosimetry. Skills training will include a grounding in clinical research methods and good clinical practise including clinical data management and analysis. There will be clinical observation opportunities in nuclear medicine and radiation oncology. The project will also involve a laboratory-based component involving tissue culture, including 3D models, and molecular and cell biology methods applicable to the investigation of the biological effects of radiopharmaceutical therapeutics.

Our research focus is on understanding and exploiting the biological effects of external beam ionizing radiation and therapeutic radionuclides in solid tumours (breast, lung, pancreas, oesophageal and colorectal cancers among others).  

Katherine undertook specialist training in Clinical Oncology at the Hammersmith Hospital and doctoral research at Edinburgh University. In 1995 she was appointed as Staff Radiation Oncologist at the Princess Margaret Hospital and Scientist at the Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto. She returned to the UK in 2006 to join the Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology and established the Experimental Radiotherapeutics Group. 

Sarah Able, Laboratory Manager
Ole Tietz, Postdoctoral Researcher
Fernando Cortezon-Tamarit, Postdoctoral Researcher
Joao Lourenco, DPhil Student
Anis Theljani, Postdoctoral Researcher
Rachel Anderson, DPhil Student
Abirami Lakshminarayanan, Postdoctoral Researcher
Sreejesh Sreedharan, Postdoctoral Researcher