Targeted Physical Therapies

40 per cent of patients whose cancers are cured receive radiotherapy, while surgery remains the intervention with the greatest prospect of cure as a standalone treatment.

This theme focuses on research into image-guided radiotherapy to reduce the incidence of treatment-related side effects and image-guided surgery to optimise tumour and regional lymph node resections.

Research into high-intensity focused ultrasound, which has significant potential for patients who are not able to undergo surgery and for whom radiotherapy may not be possible, is another focus of this theme.

Theme aims

• To develop real-time image-guided treatments that allow increased effectiveness in removing primary tumours and loco-regional lymph node metastases while simultaneously reducing damage to surrounding normal tissues
   
• To reduce treatment-related side effects for radiotherapy
   
• To enhance patient experience, optimise patient recovery times, improve quality and safety of minimally invasive surgery and improve surgical outcomes
   
• To integrate these approaches with new immunotherapies, testing the ability of highly targeted, localised treatments to trigger systemic anti-tumour effects

Theme Lead

Professor Kevin Harrington (pictured above): Joint Head of the Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging at The Institute of Cancer Research, expertise in head and neck cancer and melanoma.