by Professor Linda Yasui
On June 22-24, 2009, NIU, The University of Texas at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University hosted the a three day symposium on Recent Advances in Proton Radiation Therapy Research at NIU’s Naperville campus for physicists, physicians, biologists and researchers. Sponsors for the symposium included Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, John and Ann Doerr Fund for Computational Biomedicine at Rice University, NIU Instiute for Neutron Therapy and NIPTRC LLC. Provost Ray Alden kicked off the meeting by thanking the organizers at the Sunday evening, pre-meeting social mixer. Symposium co-chairs and program committee were Wayne Newhauser from the Medical Physics department at MD Anderson, Pablo Yepes from the Department of Physics and Astronomy Research at Rice University and George Coutrakon from the physics department here at NIU. The local organizing committee included Lisa Bergeron, Linda Yasui, Gerald Blazey, Sue Willis and Bela Erderlyi.
The meeting was officially opened on Monday morning by Congressman Bill Foster who as a physicist, business entrepreneur and politician, reiterated his support for NIPTRC at NIU.
Presentations included topics on current clinical uses of protons, radiation biology, new biological techniques and advances in imaging, treatment planning and therapy. In a keynote address, Dr. Bharat Mittal, MD, Director of Radiation Oncology at Northwestern, shared his vision of the collaboration between NIU and Northwestern University Radiation Continental breakfast and lunch provided at the symposium site on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday offered ample opportunity to informally meet other meeting guests and establish contacts and make collaborations. Monday evening, the group gathered for a barbecue. Tuesday evening was an optional event at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory where NIU’s Board of Trustees outgoing chair, Cherilyn Muerer, talked to the participants over dinner.
The biology workshop that I and Gayle Woloschak co-organized and co-chaired, closed the meeting. A wide variety of biological research topics were covered, ranging from mathematically modeling the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of various kinds of radiations like proton irradiation, the genetics of retinoblastoma patients and proton radiation outcomes, computer simulations from Monte Carlo calculations for better treatment planning for proton therapy, cataract formation from space HZE radiation, beagle dog tissue sample database and data mining, space radiation effects on brain cells and basic studies on radiation induced cell death.
At the close of a very full 3 days, surveyed participants all agreed that the meeting was a success. For more information on the meeting , check out http://www.niptrc.org/conference.html to see the power point presentations from the meeting and other information as it becomes available. Next year the proton symposium will be hosted by Rice University and planning is already underway.