Awarded in 2025
Home Department: Biomedical Physics
Faculty Advisors: Billy Loo (Radiation Oncology) and Maximilian Diehn (Radiation Oncology)

Research Title: Combining ATM Inhibition with FLASH to Improve Therapeutic Index of Radiotherapy for KEAP1-Mutant Lung Cancer

Changes in certain genes are a major reason why some lung cancers resist treatment. These changes appear in more than 1 in 5 cases of the most common type of lung cancer and are often tied to cancer returning after standard care. Blocking a DNA repair protein can make these tumors more sensitive to radiation, but it can also put healthy tissues at risk. Ultra-fast radiotherapy, called FLASH, delivering a full treatment dose in a fraction of a second has shown in early studies that it can protect healthy tissues while still targeting tumors. Combining this protein blocking with FLASH can potentially improve control of these hard-to-treat cancers while reducing side effects, providing a new treatment solution for the top cancer killer.