Category: News

Complementary but Distinct Roles for MRI and 18F-Fluoromisonidazole PET in the Assessment of Human Glioblastomas, a Swanson lab publication, has been honored by the Journal of Nuclear Medicine for being one of the three best clinical investigations for 2009!

“Glioblastoma multiforme is a primary brain tumor known for its rapid proliferation, diffuse invasion, and prominent neovasculature and necrosis. This study explores the in vivo link between these characteristics and hypoxia by comparing the relative spatial geometry of developing vasculature inferred from gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted MRI (T1Gd), edematous tumor extent revealed on T2-weighted MRI (T2), and hypoxia assessed by 18F-fluoromisonidazole PET (18F-FMISO). Given the role of hypoxia in upregulating angiogenic factors, we hypothesized that the distribution of hypoxia seen on 18F-FMISO is correlated spatially and quantitatively with the amount of leaky neovasculature seen on T1Gd….”

Read full here.

“The combination of mathematical models and biological data will change cancer research into a quantitative and predictable science.”

The combination of mathematical models and biological data will change cancer research into a quantitative and predictable science.Kristin Swanson is a 33-year-old female mathematician, and is an Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Washington in the United States. Her work sounds very cool –using mathematics to study cancer.“For mathematicians, all of the world’s problems are mathematical. All phenomena in daily lifecan be explained by math,” she told our reporter. “Cancer is no exception.”

Read full here in Chinese.  For our translation by Mindy Szeto, click here.

“Kristin Swanson, Ph.D., UW Medicine Pathology Research Associate Professor, recently received a (5 year, $1.9 Million NIH) R01 Grant, Novel Tools for Evaluation and Prediction of Radiotherapy Response in Individual Glioma Patients.  For more information on the award and Dr. Swanson’s research, please read the grant abstract below and visit Dr. Swanson’s lab website.

Gliomas are uniformly fatal primary brain tumors, the diagnosis of which has been greatly impacted by improvements in medical imaging techniques over the last several decades. However, a significant gap remains between the obvious goal of more effective therapy and the present understanding of the dynamics of the tumor’s proliferation and invasion in humans in vivo….”

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A Journal of the National Cancer Institute article featuring the Swanson Lab as one of the few labs applying mathematical modeling tools to patient-specific data.

“Statistics is well accepted as a tool in designing clinical trials and in analyzing clinical data. Similarly, mathematical theory has found applications in oncology; the current use of dose-dense chemotherapy, for example, arose from mathematical considerations. (See News, Vol. 95, No. 4, p. 254.)

But the goal of the new mathematical oncology is to be able to model tumors so well that researchers can begin to use computers to guide treatment on an individual basis. Those working in the field say that recent successes are beginning to excite a new interest among physicians in applying math to cancer…”

Click here for full article.