Speakers announced for ARIA workshop focused on evolving cancer therapies

Foreign nationals who want to attend or present at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s third Accelerating Radiotherapeutic Innovations and Applications (ARIA) workshop, November 2-3, should register by noon Monday, October 10, to ensure time to secure access. 

This workshop, which will focus on Evolving Targeted Therapies for Cancer, will have both in-person and virtual options. Its purpose is to discuss the emerging use of targeted novel radio, chemo and immunotherapies for monotherapy and combination therapy approaches to treat cancer.

A continuation of 2019’s ARIA workshop, it will refocus on how targeted radiotherapies can be integrated into the evolving landscape of precision cancer treatments; assess the use of novel chelators, nanotechnology and targeting vectors in the development of targeted cancer therapies; and maximize understanding of the radiobiology and dosimetry of the targeted radiotherapies to help them translate into effective patient treatments.

Scheduled to speak are:

• Weibo Cai, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Radiology, Medical Physics, Materials Science & Engineering, and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research focuses on molecular imaging and nanobiotechnology
• Dr. Robert Beckman, oncology clinical researcher and mathematical biologist, who has brought forward 23 new oncology therapies (and two to market) and leads the international Drug Information Association Innovative Design Scientific Working Group
• Rebecca Riggins, tenured associate professor in the Department of Oncology at the Georgetown University Medical Center and Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, whose laboratory studies the role of orphan and ligand-regulated nuclear receptors —notably the estrogen and estrogen-related receptors — in multiple malignancies, with the goal of translating their knowledge of the cellular and molecular functions of these proteins into actionable therapeutic approaches
• Tom Yankeelov, W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Chair of Computational Oncology and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Diagnostic Medicine, and Oncology at the University of Texas at Austin, who is founding Director of the Center for Computational Oncology, and also co-directs the Quantitative Oncology Research Program and Director of Cancer Imaging Research within the Livestrong Cancer Institutes at UT Austin
• Johannes Notni, Chief Science Officer for TRIMT(Targeted Radiopharmaceuticals In Molecular Theranostics), who has developed innovative molecular probes and other technology
• Stavroula Sofou, professor in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, best known for her nontraditional approaches to combat difficult-to-kill cancers in diffusion-limited environments
• Dijie Liu, principal research scientist at Viewpoint Molecular Targeting Inc., who is researching validating new biomarkers for preclinical evaluation of alpha-particle targeted radionuclide therapy
• Greeshma Agasthya, research scientist in the advanced computing for health sciences section at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who has developed and used multiscale modeling and simulations of the human body for virtual clinical trials, radiation dosimetry for imaging and therapy, and optimization of medical imaging systems for cancer applications, and has worked on artificial intelligence (AI) for predicting disease outcomes, and clinical decision support.
• Brian Zeglis, professor of chemistry at Hunter College of the City University of New York and assistant attending radiochemist in the Department of Radiology of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, whose lab is dedicated to the design, synthesis, preclinical evaluation, and clinical translation of novel radiopharmaceuticals for the imaging and therapy of disease

“We’re very excited about the opportunity to share information about the potential for these newer therapies in eradicating tumors,” said Dr. Sandra Davern, section head for ORNL’s Radioisotope Research and Development Section in the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate, and organizer of the ARIA workshop.

Register and get more information for the ARIA workshop.