CaREER: Cancer Research Education Excellence in Radiotherapy

Project Abstract Radiotherapy (RT) is used in the treatment of over 50% of cancer patients. Despite major technological developments, RT is still critically limited by normal tissue toxicity, and curative treatment is restricted to localized tumors. Pervasive disparities also exist in access to RT in the

USA and in global health due to treatment costs, distance-time barriers, cultural and infrastructure/technology barriers. These disparities are also fundamentally reflected in the radiotherapy workforce. There are now emerging transformative RT research areas and initiatives that can address the toxicity limitations in substantial ways, extend RT to curative treatment of

both local and metastatic disease, and reduce disparities with innovations to reduce treatment time and cost, enhance patient convenience, and significantly increase survival and quality of life for patients. Some of the exciting emerging transformative areas of RT research include: Radio- Immunotherapy, FLASH RT, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in RT, smart RT biomaterials, MRI-guided

RT, and new technology and approaches for global health, all with tremendous potential to engage students/trainees and faculty to advance innovation and reduce disparities. These emerging areas are exciting and there is great need for concerted and accelerated efforts in training a diverse next generation of research leaders in these areas. To address this unmet

need, the overall goal and innovation of this project is to establish a premier CaREER (Cancer Research Education Excellence in Radiotherapy) program to train the next generation of scientists, technologists and physicians skilled in research in emerging transformative areas of RT and with innovation focus on addressing RT disparities. The proposed CaREER program will

leverage a strong institutional environment at Johns Hopkins in collaboration with faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities like Howard University and global health partners to attract and retain significant number of underrepresented minorities, who will be empowered to pursue careers and higher education programs involving cancer research. The highest

significance of the CaREER program is expected in the concerted training of diverse next generation leaders in the newly emerging and transformative research areas of radiotherapy, to drive innovation in overcoming current RT limitations and reducing disparities.