S3047
Invited Speaker
ESTRO 2026
5524 Bridging physics, biology and clinical radiotherapy
A central focus will be the role of European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology in driving harmonization efforts. Through its Core Curriculum, educational initiatives, and support for early career professionals, ESTRO is uniquely positioned to foster alignment while respecting national diversity. Ultimately, harmonization is not about uniformity, but about ensuring high-quality training standards across countries. By working together, the radiation oncology community can build a more cohesive and future- ready training ecosystem, ensuring that all patients benefit from consistently excellent care. 5514 Breaking silos: Interdisciplinary collaboration for better scientific training Uulke A. van der Heide Radiation Oncology, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Radiation Oncology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands Radiotherapy is a multidisciplinary field where professionals with different backgrounds work together to give patients optimal care. This multidisciplinary character is also reflected in radiotherapy research, where often two or more disciplines are involved. When experts from each discipline expand their contribution to other areas, integrating their knowledge with other experts, the transition to interdisciplinary research is made. In this setting new research questions can arise that transcend a single discipline. The interpretation of research data can deepen by discussions between professionals from different backgrounds. The decisive feature of interdisciplinarity is the ability to integrate disciplinary knowledge. If there is no cultivation and training of this ability during teaching, but simply increased knowledge of different disciplines, it can still only be called multidisciplinary education. Core integration abilities are interdisciplinary communication and teamwork that is founded on a common knowledge base. They also involve appreciation of non-disciplinary perspectives and recognition of disciplinary limitations. To be able to work effectively in an interdisciplinary setting doesn’t mean that each member needs to be an expert on everything. It is however necessary that a member has sufficient understanding of the other disciplines to be able to communicate with experts in those areas and appreciate their perspective. In this teaching lecture examples will be given of multidisciplinary research and the advantage of integration in interdisciplinary research. The lecture also will discuss the opportunities for interdisciplinary learning that are offered by the ESTRO school.
to support interdisciplinary training and biologically informed proton therapy
Nicholas T Henthorn 1,2 , John-William Warmenhoven 1,2 1 Division of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. 2 Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom Radiotherapy is prescribed in physical units of energy per mass, which, through years of clinical experience, has been correlated with biological effect. However, this correlation is incomplete and fails in several scenarios, most notably when switching radiation modality. In particle therapy, a relative biological effectiveness (RBE) scaling factor is introduced to convert between photon and particle dose. In proton therapy, a fixed RBE of 1.1 is commonly applied, despite extensive in vitro evidence demonstrating variable RBE. In carbon ion therapy, even larger variations are observed, and physical dose is scaled using models such as the LEM or MKM. Current approaches typically rely on scaling photon-irradiated cell survival measurements using modelled DNA damage distributions, generally assuming that biological response is driven primarily by double strand break (DSB) induction. In this work, the Manchester mechanistic models of DNA damage and repair will be presented, with specific application to proton therapy. These models use Geant4-based track structure simulations across hierarchical geometries, ranging from chromatin-scale DNA representations [1] to full cell models incorporating chromosome organisation derived from measured Hi-C contact maps [2]. These simulations generate cell line-specific 4D maps of DNA damage recorded in the standard DNA Damage format [3]. Damage distributions are passed to our DNA repair model, DaMaRiS [4], where DSB ends are modelled as sub-diffusive molecules undergoing repair through non-homologous end joining or homologous recombination. Repair is simulated as a stochastic process with time-constant based recruitment of repair proteins. Repair pathway choice is modelled as a competition between entwined pathways [5]. The model makes predictions of successful repair, incomplete repair, or misrepair. Due to the modelled chromosome geometry, misrepair events further predict chromosome aberrations, including frequency and size of deletions. This framework also allows modelling of knockout cell lines and modifiers such as chemotherapies or repair inhibitors. To date, these models have been used to assess proton RBE based on damage complexity [6], investigate the impact of modelling assumptions [7], correlate simulations with experimental foci
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online