radiotherapy

Led FAST-Forward, which cut breast radiotherapy from three weeks to one with no loss of effectiveness.

Radiation oncologist specialising in head and neck cancer who oversees clinical affairs at Poland's National Research Institute of Oncology.

Led the proton dose-escalation trial in prostate cancer and the comparative-effectiveness debate over proton therapy.

Created the low, intermediate and high-risk classification that every prostate cancer decision starts from.

Milan radiation oncologist leading ESTRO, Europe's radiotherapy and oncology society.

Physicist who invented the MR-linac, letting radiotherapy see and adapt to the tumour in real time.

Radiotherapy to the abdomen or pelvis raises the risk of cancer in the bowel that sat in the field, and the risk is confined to the irradiated segment. For adults no country runs an organised colonoscopy programme afterwards, so bleeding or a change in bowel habit years later should be investigated rather than put down to the old treatment.

This is the second cancer with a real screening programme attached, and the one most worth asking about by name. A woman who had radiotherapy to breast tissue between the ages of 10 and 35, most often for Hodgkin lymphoma, is eligible in England for annual magnetic resonance imaging from age 25 or 30, and being missed from that list has happened often enough that asking is reasonable.

Led the PORTEC trials that defined who needs radiotherapy for endometrial cancer and brought molecular classification into treatment decisions.

Led IMPORT LOW, which showed partial-breast radiotherapy is as effective as whole-breast treatment with fewer side effects.

A British radiotherapy schedule, invented at Mount Vernon, that squeezed a six-week course into twelve days and cut the risk of death by about a quarter.

Some of this risk is a decision rather than a fate. Where two treatments cure equally well and one carries less late risk, that is a conversation to have before treatment starts. Trials have settled several: a different partner drug in myeloma, a lower cyclophosphamide dose in breast cancer, brachytherapy rather than external beam.

London radiation oncologist who led ALSYMPCA, the trial that showed radium-223 lengthens survival in prostate cancer that has spread to bone, and RADICALS-RT, which showed radiotherapy after prostatectomy can safely wait until the PSA rises.

Led CONVERT, which set the radiotherapy schedule for limited-stage small-cell lung cancer.

Radiation oncologist who built AI models from trial slides to decide which prostate cancer patients need hormone therapy.

Radiation oncologist who chairs the directorate of the University Cancer Center Inselspital in Bern.

Led SABR-COMET, the trial that showed treating a few metastases with high-dose radiation can prolong survival.

British radiation oncologist who led CHHiP, the trial that showed prostate cancer can be treated in 20 radiotherapy sessions rather than 37 with the same results, changing practice worldwide.

The Leeds clinical oncologist who led CR07, the trial that made short-course radiotherapy before surgery the standard for rectal cancer, and who now works on preserving the rectum instead of removing it.

Adelaide radiation oncologist who chairs TROG's Scientific Committee and is its President Elect.

Radiation specialist who has directed QST Hospital in Chiba, Japan's pioneering carbon ion radiotherapy hospital, since April 2024.

Radiation oncologist behind the MACH-NC meta-analyses that proved chemoradiotherapy helps head and neck cancer, and the first FLASH-treated patient.

Led RTOG 0617, the trial that showed higher radiation doses do not help in stage III lung cancer and set today's 60 Gy standard.

Pioneering radiation oncologist at Aarhus who led the DAHANCA trials on hypoxia modification and radiotherapy for head and neck cancer.

Led the trials comparing stereotactic radiotherapy with surgery for operable early lung cancer.

Statistician who ran the START, FAST-Forward and POETIC trials that reshaped breast cancer radiotherapy and endocrine therapy.

Lung cancer is the commonest cause of death among people who develop a second cancer, and chest radiotherapy raises the risk of it for more than twenty years. There is no screening programme aimed at survivors anywhere, although some survivor groups have a measured rate above the threshold at which lung screening was shown to save lives, so this is a gap rather than a settled answer.

Radiobiologist who discovered the FLASH effect: ultra-fast radiation spares healthy tissue while still killing tumours.

Zurich radiation oncologist and ESTRO Past-President, a leading voice on stereotactic radiotherapy for oligometastases.

Radiation oncologist who speaks for the Comprehensive Cancer Center Tübingen-Stuttgart and directs radiation oncology at Tübingen University Hospital.

The UK trial that settled how rectal cancer is treated before surgery: five days of radiotherapy for everyone beats waiting to see who needs it afterwards.

The Royal Marsden oncologist who ran the trial that cut a four-week course of prostate radiotherapy to five treatments, and published the higher urinary side-effect rate alongside the good news.

Mayo Clinic radiation oncologist whose trials showed that focused radiosurgery preserves thinking and memory better than whole-brain radiotherapy for brain metastases, and that sparing the hippocampus reduces cognitive harm when whole-brain treatment is needed.

Sydney radiation oncologist who is President of TROG Cancer Research, Australasia's radiation oncology trials group.

Chairs NRG Oncology, the largest US radiotherapy cooperative group, and leads head and neck de-escalation trials.

A radiation-induced cancer appears in or at the edge of the treated area, usually more than ten years later, and the risk rises with the dose the organ received and falls with the age at which the person was treated. Which organs sat in the field is therefore the question that decides everything that follows, and it is answerable from the radiotherapy record.

Argentine diplomat leading the IAEA since 2019, whose Rays of Hope initiative expands radiotherapy and nuclear medicine access in low- and middle-income countries.

Radiation oncologist at the University of Chicago known for the oligometastasis concept and for research linking radiation with anti-tumour immunity.

Dutch radiation oncologist who was lead author of PORTEC-2, the trial that showed vaginal brachytherapy is as good as pelvic radiotherapy for high-intermediate-risk endometrial cancer, with fewer side effects.

Pioneer of stereotactic body radiotherapy, whose RTOG 0236 trial made SBRT the standard for inoperable early lung cancer.

Weill Cornell pathologist-immunologist known for radiation-immunotherapy research; SITC Vice President.

A sarcoma arising in tissue that was irradiated is uncommon, appears after about seven years or more, and is recognised by where it is rather than by any test. In the treated breast it most often takes the form of angiosarcoma, and because it can look like a bruise or a cluster of reddish-blue nodules it is the one second cancer a person might reasonably mistake for something harmless.

The trial testing a thing the NHS already does without evidence: giving radiotherapy after surgery for a high-risk squamous cell carcinoma, to stop it coming back.

Radiation oncologist who established stereotactic radiotherapy as a non-surgical option for primary kidney cancer.

Skin cancer is the commonest second cancer after almost any treatment, and the commonest one left out of the counts, because registries record non-melanoma skin cancers inconsistently or not at all. Most are basal cell carcinomas, most are curable when treated, and the practical answer is to look at irradiated skin and to have anything that bleeds, crusts or does not heal in six weeks examined.

Carbon-ion radiotherapy specialist who directs the Gunma University Heavy Ion Medical Center, Japan's first university-based carbon-ion cancer treatment facility.

The thyroid is among the most radiation-sensitive tissues there is, and neck or upper chest radiotherapy raises the risk of thyroid cancer for decades. Whether to look for it is genuinely unsettled: the international guideline panel compared ultrasound against feeling the neck, found neither better, and wrote a decision aid instead of a recommendation.

Led the Canadian trials that established three-week breast radiotherapy and defined when nodal radiotherapy helps.

Radiation oncologist directing science and research at Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute, with a research focus on brain tumours and brain metastases.