Linda Chen

7y in the making!!! As I always spoke about this, the field of #NasopharyngealCarcinoma leads the way in driving individualised treatment in #HeadNeckCancer When we published our initial idea of stratifying patients by their early treatment response using #EBVDNA back then in 2018, we decided to test our idea formally with a trial, and kudos to a very talented #biostats and willing collaborators, we came up with EP-STAR Very glad to see it finally published today in @Nature 🍸 nature.com/articles/s4158…

Check out this new #RedJournal article from @LChen_MD et al on a prospective trial evaluating post-operative HPV circulating tumor DNA guided adjuvant therapy for HPV-related oropharyngeal carcinoma (PATH study). tinyurl.com/rjpath

4/4 Deferring adj RT based on post-op TTMV-HPV DNA testing led to a high rate of disease recurrence. More work is needed to guide use of HPV ctDNA as an integral biomarker. Grateful to our patients, MSKCC HN DMT, and co-PI’s Marc Cohen, Eric Sherman, @imrtlee

3/4 Active surveillance resulted in early cohort closure (predefined stopping rule) – with 3/12 patients developing gross recurrence 6 months post-op. Radiographic recurrence was not preceded by a positive TTMV-HPV DNA score.

🧵1/4 PATH study(Cohort A) out in @IJROBP – Our trial asks whether undetectable post-operative HPV ctDNA can select OPC candidates for adj RT omission and found high rates of disease recurrence #radonc #hncsm redjournal.org/article/S0360-…

@UTSW_RadOnc @DavidSherMD Congratulations !!

Congratulations to Dr. @DavidSherMD who is now holder of the Barbara Crittenden Professorship in Cancer Research! This honor recognizes his transformative work in patient care, clinical research, and #radonc, supporting his efforts to innovate/improve outcomes for patients.

Proud to highlight our @MSKCancerCenter efforts led by @imrtlee @xrtgenomics de-escalating HPV+ def CRT 70 Gy➡️30Gy to GROSS disease (n=128, 2 yr LRC 94.7%) w/FMISO selection @JCO_ASCO. Also re-posting our data w/30 Gy MICROSCOPIC dosing (n=276, 2 yr LRC 97%) w/o FMISO @JAMAOnc

1/N Finally out!! -- 30Gy for HPV+OPC in @JCO_ASCO – work by the @MSKCancerCenter Head and Neck team, led by @imrtlee, Eric Sherman, and myself on using hypoxia imaging response to cut treatment 60% (70->30Gy)! #radonc #hncsm ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JC…

9/ Immense gratitude to pathology (Travis Hollmann, Nora Katabi, Yanyun Li, Jorge Reis-Filho), rad onc (@xrtgenomics @imrtlee and Reith Sarkar), and HN DMT colleagues (Richard Wong, Luc Morris, Eric Sherman) who made this work possible 🙏

8/ It is unclear if this TCF1+ T cell reduction is in the setting of a pro-tumorigenic TIME or impacted by RT, but this finding may be relevant in understanding outcomes in concurrent immunotherapy/CRT trials: JAVELIN, HN004, KEYNOTE-412

1/🧵 Happy to share our study evaluating the tumor microenvironment in recurrent HPV+ HNSCC patients treated with chemoradiation @MSK_RadOnc We evaluated TIME composition in paired initial/recurrent tumors and report a novel depletion of TCF1+ T cells tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@UPMCHillmanCC @DamonRunyon @BenNacev @PittHealthSci @UPMCnews @UPMCPhysicianEd Congrats Ben!

Benjamin A. Nacev, MD, PhD, has been named a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator by the @DamonRunyon Cancer Research Foundation. Dr. Nacev will use this opportunity to continue his work on recurring genetic changes that happen in sarcoma patients. bit.ly/3KcSqyT

Excited to share this project highlighting the value of multi-disciplinary care: Pts with oral ca can recur before post-op RT can start- these cases can be found on pre-RT imaging. At MSK, we phased in use of post-op PET after installation of our PET sim sciencedirect.com/science/articl…