Event Details

The presentation will be a two-part delivery by Professor Lijun Ma (image on left) and Dr Eric Chang (image on right)

The genesis of radiation medicine followed immediately after the discovery of X-ray and radioactivity by two preeminent physicists: Professor Wilhelm Rontgen and Madame Marie Curie, who had won the first and third Nobel Prize in 1901 and 1903 in separate. Over the past one hundred and twenty years, radiation therapy, surgery and chemotherapy had been established as the three pillars in the management of cancer and malignancies. However, over the past ten years, the field of radiation therapy has witnessed a hockey-stick curve of innovations and developments that fundamentally challenged this century-old paradigm, and it is widely believed that data science will uptick such a curve in an unprecedented manner. In this presentation, the landscape of the past, present and future of radiation therapy will be reviewed from the perspective of a radiation oncologist and a radiation physicist.

Speaker Bio

Lijun Ma is a Professor of Radiological Physics, and his research is focused on developing precision radiation medicine tools to treat cancer, benign and vascular lesions as well as functional disorder. He has a broad background in radiological physics specifically on radiation modulation, imaging guidance and data modeling and engineering. He has served as PI and co-Investigator on several federal, state, non-profit society funded grants as well as industrial partnership. He has also served as technical lead on multi-center international clinical trials. He is an inventor of novel radiation medicine technologies with multiple U.S. and international patents granted by the USPO and PCT and licensed in clinical use. He successfully administered the projects (e.g., staffing, research protections, budget), collaborated with other researchers, and produced >150 peer-reviewed publications. With joint collaborations with radiation oncologists, neurosurgeons and computer engineers and data scientists, this proposal draws our current research directed at translating a novel brain radio surgical tool into clinical practice. The preliminary results from the project have been selected for the front-cover page of a peer-reviewed journal. In summary, He has built a multi-disciplinary clinical and technical team that possesses the expertise, experience, and passion to successfully execute the proposed study.

Dr. Eric Chang is a world authority in the use of advanced radiation therapy techniques in the treatment of a variety of benign conditions and malignant tumors of the central nervous system. He is highly experienced in handling both routine cases, and the most complex cases requiring radiotherapeutic evaluation in a multi-disciplinary setting of experts comprising neuro-radiation oncologists, neurosurgeons and neuro-oncologists, and neuro-radiologists.

Dr. Chang received his undergraduate degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and medical doctorate degree from Harvard Medical School. His internship in medicine at the California Pacific Medical Center at UC San Francisco and residency training was performed at the Harvard Joint Center for Radiation Therapy, in Boston, Massachusetts. He served on the faculty at MD Anderson Cancer Center for over 12 years and held the academic rank of Professor and Director of the CNS Stereotactic Radiation Program. He has held national leadership roles including having served as member and Chair of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Clinical Research Committee (CRC). He served as CNS track leader for the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Scientific Program Committee, and member of the ASCO Cancer Education Committee. Dr. Chang has served as the co-leader for the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) brain metastasis guidelines development task force and as a member of the Annual Program Committee of the Educational Council of ASTRO. He is past Chair of the American Radium Society Appropriate Use Committee (AUC) for Brain and has been designated as a Fellow of the American Radium Society in 2022. He has been listed in the Best Doctors Directory and America’s Top Doctors for Cancer in Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. He has been named Fellow of the American Society of Radiation Oncology. Dr. Chang led a phase III randomized controlled trial on brain metastasis published in the Lancet Oncology which has helped to change the practice patterns for metastatic brain disease. Dr. Chang has been selected as a plenary speaker for past meetings of ASTRO and the American Association for Neurological Surgeons (AANS). He has authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed published medical journal papers. Dr. Chang currently serves as chairman and Professor of the Department of Radiation Oncology and Medical Director for the Radiation Oncology Clinics at Keck Medicine, and at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and co-director of the Keck Medicine gamma knife radiosurgery program.

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POC: Karen Rawlins and Alma Nava