Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Novel Serum Biomarkers For Lung Cancer Early Diagnosis And Clinical Outcome, Fanmao Zhang

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

The five-year survival rate for all stages of lung cancer combined is only 17%, which has changed little over the past 40 years. Despite the tremendous efforts made, serum biomarkers with clinical utility for lung cancer early detection and clinical outcome prediction are still lacking. Metabolic alterations have been recognized as an emerging hallmark of cancer. We aimed to investigate the metabolic changes associated with lung cancer and to identify novel clinically applicable serum biomarkers for lung cancer early diagnosis and clinical outcome.

Serum metabolites are potential biomarkers for lung cancer early detection. We first performed global metabolomic profiling followed …

Image-Guided Proton Therapy For Online Dose-Evaluation And Adaptive Planning, Joey P. Cheung

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

The main advantage for using protons in radiotherapy is their finite range in patients, allowing for potential improved sparing of normal tissues. However, this comes at a cost of increased sensitivity to range uncertainties. Density changes along the beam path will affect the proton range and the resultant dose distribution, making it difficult to estimate the impact of visible anatomic changes to the patient dose distribution. In order to better understand the effect of anatomy change on proton dose, some form of treatment-time verification is required and methods to correct for observed changes would be beneficial. Therefore, this project aims …

Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase (Pi3k) As A Therapeutic Target In Nsclc, Christopher W. Stamatkin

Theses and Dissertations--Pharmacy

Deregulated activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway is central to many human malignancies. The functions of this pathway are critical for normal cell metabolism, proliferation, and survival. In lung cancers, the PI3K pathway activity is often aberrantly driven by multiple mutations, including EGFR, KRAS, and PIK3CA. Molecules targeting the PI3K pathway are intensely investigated as potential anti-cancer agents. Although inhibitors of the pathway are currently in clinical trials, rational and targeted use of these compounds, alone or in combination, requires an understanding of isoform-specific activity in context. We sought to identify class IA PI3K enzyme (p110a/PIK3CA, p110b/PIK3CB, p110d/PIK3CD) activities using …

Adaptive Radiation Therapy For Lung Cancer, Christian W. Dial

Theses and Dissertations

Prognosis for lung cancer patients remains poor. For those receiving radiation therapy, local control and survival have been shown to improve with increased doses; however, deliverable dose is often limited by associated toxicity. Therefore, methods that reduce dose to normal tissues and allow isotoxic escalation are desirable. Adaptive radiation therapy seeks to improve treatment by modifying the initial plan throughout delivery, and has been shown to decrease normal tissue dose. Studies to date suggest a trend of increasing benefit with increases in replanning frequency; however, replanning is costly in terms of workload and past studies implement at most weekly adaptation. …