A husband-and-wife physician team at the University of Virginia (UVA) Cancer Center has been awarded a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research of a new radiation therapy technique for women with early-stage breast cancer.
Dr. Timothy Showalter, a radiation oncologist, and Dr. Shayna Showalter, a breast cancer surgeon, have developed a technique they call precision breast intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT), which is performed in the center's CT brachytherapy suite, the university said. It better directs radiation during therapy, doubling the dose patients can receive to the tumor bed, compared with conventional IORT. This reduces weeks of radiation treatments into a single dose given at the time of breast-preserving surgery, according to UVA.
The Showalters have completed a phase I trial of the technique and are now conducting a phase II trial at UVA and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
