Supervisor Database Search

• cancer/oncology

• Medicine

• Oncology

I’m an academic clinical oncologist who treats and studies lung cancer. My research mainly focuses on drug–radiotherapy combinations, cardiopulmonary toxicity and circulating tumour DNA. Examples of studies that I’ve led:

Real-world data:
• Should radiation dose be personalized in patients with localized non-small cell lung cancer and actionable genetic alterations? Insight from a multicentre real-world study. JTO Clin Res Rep 2025.
• Pulmonary vein dose and risk of atrial fibrillation in patients with non-small cell lung cancer following definitive radiotherapy: an NI-HEART analysis. Radiother Oncol 2024.

Clinical studies:
• Long-term outcomes after concurrent once- or twice-daily chemoradiation in limited-stage small cell lung cancer: a brief report from the CONVERT trial. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2024.
• Early circulating tumour DNA kinetics measured by ultra-deep next-generation sequencing during radical radiotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer: a feasibility study. Radiat Oncol 2020.

Pre-clinical:
• A multimodality assessment of the protective capacity of statin therapy in a mouse model of radiation cardiotoxicity. Radiother Oncol 2024.
• Spatial gene expression changes in the mouse heart after base-targeted irradiation. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2023.

Physics:
• Validation of an established deep learning auto-segmentation tool for cardiac substructures in 4D radiotherapy planning scans. Phys Imaging Radiat Oncol 2022.

Radiotherapy with concurrent chemotherapy and adjuvant immunotherapy is the gold standard treatment for non-small cell lung cancer that has spread to multiple mediastinal lymph nodes. Standard practice is to treat involved lymph nodes in a similar fashion to the primary tumour, in terms of dose fractionation and motion management, despite their smaller size and reduced motion.

The impact of mediastinal radiation has come under scrutiny recently as the radiation dose received by several cardiac substructures has been shown to be associated with cardiotoxicity. Furthermore lymphopenia resulting from incidental irradiation of the centrally-located great vessels and bone marrow has been associated with inferior survival. In addition, the impact of incidentally irradiating uninvolved mediastinal lymph structures on tumour control outcomes has not been studied, despite their important roles in anti-cancer immune surveillance, with and without adjuvant immunotherapy. Therefore new strategies for reducing the mediastinal radiation dose are needed.

The title of this PhD project is "An Assessment of Mediastinal Lymph Node Irradiation Techniques in on Outcomes in NSCLC". The objective is to examine the relationship between involved and uninvolved lymph node irradiation with cancer control and lymphopenia in NSCLC, and how a range of measures now possible in the era of conformal radiotherapy could help improve outcomes. To challenge the dogma on lymph node irradiation, the ICAT Fellow will build and deploy retrospective datasets that combine clinical, radiotherapy, nuclear and radiology information. The Fellow will become adept with technical radiotherapy planning and statistical analysis, but there will also be opportunities to design and deliver other types of studies within the PhD framework.

Some retrospective aspects of this work will be performed using the NI–HEART dataset (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37348608/) and the project will be co-supervised by Dr Conor McGarry (Radiotherapy Physicist) and Dr Stephanie Doherty (Thoracic Radiologist), and will have scope for remote working.

Potential co-supervisors, Dr Conor McGarry and Dr Stephanie Doherty