2025….so far

The ultra-fast cancer treatments which could replace conventional radiotherapy

Alexander Lin, MD and Constantinos Koumenis, PhD were both quoted in a BBC article highlighting the potential benefits of FLASH radiation, the work they are doing, and the proposed clinical trial that they hope will launch this year in patients with recurrent head and neck cancer.

This BBC article was also featured in the February 4 edition of the Penn Today newsletter.

Costas Koumenis, PhD participated in the defense of a PHD Thesis on FLASH Radiotherapy by Maxime Dubail, a student with Dr. Charles Fouillade at the Marie Curie Institute of the University of Paris. The next day, he presented work by his group and Penn RadOnc on FLASH radiotherapy.

Both events took place at the historical lab of Dr. Marie Curie where she performed some of the first experiments with radioactivity which led to two Nobel Prizes. The desk in the picture is the same desk she used for her experiments. She and her husband who also worked with her in the lab are depicted along with photos form Mme Curie’s lab notebook. Notably, the first experiments with FLASH Radiotherapy were also performed at the Curie Institute approximately 12 years ago.

2024

• In May, Costas delivered the Robert Kallman Award Lecture at Stanford University. Dr. Kallman established the Stanford RadBio Res. Division where Costas trained as a postdoctoral fellow in radiobiology.

• Our manuscript on use of Proton FLASH radiotherapy to spare normal tissue toxicity for the treatment of Head and Neck Cancer in preclinical models has been published in Molecualr Cancer Therapeutics. Congratulations to Priyanka, first author of the study and the rest of the team, which also included several collaborators. You can read our paper here.

• Congratulations to George Morcos for being awarded the AACR-Margaret Foti Foundation Undergraduate Prize for Cancer Research at the AACR annual meeting in San Diego, CA, having placed 2nd among over 100 participants! George presented his work on use of FLASH radiotherapy to spare salivary gland function in preclinical models of Head and Neck cancer.

• Congratulations to undegraduate student researcher George Morcos for being awarded the prestigious Thuron Scholarship to study in the UK. Following his graduation from Penn this May, George will head to Cambridge University to pursue a M.S. degree in the laboratory of Dr. Fernandez-Antoran to extend his studies and gain additional experience on FLASH radiotherapy.

2023

•  Great news! Yiannis has been appointed Assistant Professor and started his own group at Penn Radonc!! Congrats Yiannis, we’re all cheering you on and are looking forward to great stuff form your lab! Check Yiannis’s Penn page here

• Congratulations to undergraduate researcher George Morcos who was awarded an Undergraduate Scholar Award from AACR which will fund his travel to present his work at the 2023 and 2024 Annual Meetings in Orlando and San Diego, respectively

•  Costas will chair an exciting session on “FLASH Radiotherapy: From Animal Models to the Clinic” at the upcoming 2023 AACR Annual Meeting in Orlando Florida.  Erinn Rankin (Stanford) and Brian Pogue (Wisconsin) will also present. https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10828/session/57Come and hear about new and exciting developments in the FLASH radiation field.

2022

• Check out our latest paper just out in Nature Cell Biology! Many kudos to Yiannis and Harris who led this multi-lab effort. In this paper, we show that stromal ISR/UPR and ATF4 drive perivascular CAF activation, tumor growth & metastasis via multi-level regulation of collagen production and angiogenesis. Special thanks to contributing members of my lab and our fantastic collaborators, including the labs of Ellen Pure, Sandra Ryeom, Serge Fuchs, J. Alan Diehl, Christofer Marine and Artemis Hadjigeorgiou. Also, check out the accompanying commentary framing this work into larger context of tumor microenvironment biology.
  https://t.co/0difGV79NG
  https://t.co/LN5cxfWS5w

• Exciting news for the Lab and the Department of Radiation Oncology! We have been awarded a major Program Project (P01) grant from the NIH/NCI to study the mechanisms and potential impact of Ultra-high-dose “FLASH” radiotherapy in preclinical models together with several other colleagues at Penn, Duke, Oxford and Heidelberg Universities. Read the press release here:

  Penn Medicine Awarded $12.3M NIH Grant to Study Ultra-Fast, High-Dose FLASH Radiation Therapy for Cancer

  
  

  2021

• Congratulations to Yiannis, for yet another major award! Yiannis was the recipitent of the Best Oral Presentation Award at the FRPT (Flash Radiotherapy and Particle Therapy) meeting-held virtually in Dec. 2021.

• Congratulations to Anastasia, for receiving the Best Abstract Award for the forthcoming FRPT (Flash Radiotherapy and Particle Therapy) Conference which will take place in Vienna and online on 1-3 December 2021!

• Congratulations to Yiannis for being named the Radiation Research Society’s (RRS) Young Investigator of the Month, for June 2021!

• Congratulations to Yiannis for receiving the 2020 Radiation Research Foundation’s (RRF) Career Development Award for his proposal: “Delineating the role of STAT3 on normal tissue radioprotection and pancreatic tumor radiosensitization in a preclinical setting”. Read more about it here: https://www.radres.org/page/RRFAward!

• Congratulations to former Koumenis Lab members Harris Avgousti and Victoria Wu for their admission into Medical School for the fall of 2021. Victoria will be attending Case Western Reserve’s SOM in Cleveland and Harris will head to Chicago to attend Nortwestern University’s Feinberg Medical School. Congrats, and keep in touch!

• Read the commentary by Anastasia and Costas on the clinical promise and potential hurdles of FLASH Therapy on p22 in the ASTRO’s Spring 2021 Newsletter. https://www.astro.org/ASTRO/media/ASTRO/News%20and%20Publications/ASTROnews/PDFs/2021_Spring_ASTROnews.pdf.