14th Seminar of HITRIplus - Accelerating the future: designing a robust and affordable radiation therapy treatment system for challenging environments, Manjit Dosanjh, University of Oxford/ICEC/CERN

Tuesday 28 Nov 2023, 17:00 → 18:00 Europe/Zurich

ZOOM

Angelica Facoetti (CNAO Foundation), Sandro Rossi (Fondazione CNAO)

Global general scientific seminars linked to the HITRIplus project activities organised in the context of WP2 Networking, Communication, and Dissemination.

To apply for beamtime, please follow the instructions on this page: https://hitriplus.eu/transnational-access/ 

---

        

About Manjit Dosanjh:

Manjit Dosanjh is the former senior advisor for medical applications at CERN and a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford as well as the Project Leader of STELLA (Smart Technologies to Extend Lives with Linear Accelerators) for ICEC  (International Cancer Expert Corps). She has coordinated the ENLIGHT (European Network for Light Ion Hadron Therapy) Network since 2006. She is the Networking Pillar for the HITRIplus project.

She holds a PhD in Biochemical Engineering from the UK and is involved in the fields of cancer and medical applications of physics spanning more than 30 years. During which she has held positions in various academic and research institutions in Europe and the U.S., including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) at the University of California and the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Italy. 

She has worked with health- and STEM-related NGOs and with the UN Committee on Status of Women in Geneva for over 20 years with UN-Geneva. She is on the Board of Directors for ICEC based in Washington DC, that is actively involved in addressing the lack of access to cancer treatment in LMICs. 

17:00 → 17:45 Project STELLA

Cancer is a major global health challenge. It is estimated that the annual cancer incidence will rise from 19.3 million cases and 10 million deaths in 2020 to as many as 27.5 million cases and 16.3 deaths in 2040. About 65 to 70% of the increases will occur in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).
Even though radiation therapy (RT) plays a critical role in treatment for over half of all patients with cancer, there is a lack of access to this treatment globally, especially in LMICs. Linear accelerators (LINACs) offer state-of-the-art cancer treatment but for LMICs this technology is expensive to acquire, operate and service. The harsh environment in LMICs often negatively affects machine performance, causing large machine downtimes.
Project STELLA (Smart Technology Extending Lives with Linear Accelerators) is a collaboration among the International Cancer Expert Corps, STFC, UK, CERN and LMIC countries addressing the lack of access to RT by developing a robust and affordable LINAC-based RT system.

17:45 → 18:00 Discussion