Sunday, October 18

Setting the stage

Topical Reviews 1-5

Symposium 1 - DNA repair (I): Targeting the DNA damage response

Symposium 2 - Early detection

Symposium 3 - Tumour radiosensitivity prediction

Symposium 4 - Space radiobiology: CNS effects

Symposium 5 - History Committee: The role of the cell cycle in radiation response -
stem cells, cycles and checkpoints

Special Topics Symposium 1 - Low Dose Radiotherapy for COVID-19

Special Topics Symposium 2 - Racial justice in radiation oncology & research

Monday, October 19

Sunrise Session

Topical Reviews 6-10

Plenary Lecture 1 - How the dichotomous roles of interferon signaling regulate radiation and immunotherapy response

Welcome and Opening Remarks with RRS President

Symposium 6 - DNA repair (I): Basic research

Symposium 7 - Radiation emergency management: Experience from Japan, China and the US

Symposium 8 - Drug radiation combinations

Symposium 9 - New approaches in pre-clinical particle radiotherapy

Symposium 10 - Radiosensitisers and hypoxia modifiers

Symposium 11 - New advances in radiation modeling approaches

Symposium 12 - NT effects (I): Innovations in the molecular mechanisms of normal tissue damage

Symposium 13 - Immunotherapy RT combinations

Symposium 14 - New approaches in clinical particle radiotherapy

Symposium 15 - The future of nanomedicines combined with radiotherapy

Failia Memorial Award Lecture - The many facets of heavy ion science

Bio Statement:
Dr. Durante got his Ph.D. in physics in 1992 at the University Federico II in Naples, Italy, and has then worked as postdoctoral students at NASA and NIRS (Japan). He has dedicated his career to the biophysics of high-energy charged particles, with applications in cancer therapy and space radiation protection. He is generally recognized as world leader in the field of heavy ion radiobiology and medical physics and is co-author of over 400 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and one patent in proton therapy. He worked for many years on charged particle biodosimetry in astronauts and cancer patients, heavy ion shielding, and new applications of particle therapy in oncology and noncancer diseases (heart arrhythmia). He has been awarded several prizes for his contributions to charged particle biophysics, including the 8th Warren K. Sinclair Award of NCRP, the 2013 IBA-Europhysics Award for Applied Nuclear Science and Nuclear Methods in Medicine (European Physics Society), and the 2013 Bacq & Alexander award of the European Radiation Research Society.

Failla Award Criteria:
The Failla Award was established in 1962-1963 to honor the late Gioacchino Failla, one of the founding fathers of the Radiation Research Society and its second president. The award is given annually to an outstanding member of the radiation research community in recognition of a history of significant contributions to radiation research.

Sunset Session

Tuesday, October 20

Symposium 16 - Radiation-induced DNA damage

Symposium 17 - Biodosimetry

Symposium 18 - Molecular radiotherapy

Symposium 19 - 2nd Bill Morgan memorial symposium: Low dose biology, epidemiology,
its integration & implications for radiation protection: an update

Symposium 20 - NTT Effects (II): genetics / prediction

The Inaugural Herman D. Suit, MD, DPhil Plenary Lecture: Tech developments in RT - MR guided RT

Topical Reviews 11-15

Symposium 21 - DNA repair (III): Complex DNA damage repair

Symposium 23 - NTT effects (III): Chemical mitigators of normal tissue toxicity developed under the NIAID medical countermeasures program

Symposium 24 - Epidemiology (I): Computational phantoms for epidemiological studies

Symposium 25 - Intracellular signaling

Marie Curie Award Lecture - Co-clinical trial of a mouse model of soft tissue sarcoma suggests a beneficial outcome of adding an anti-PD1 antibody to the standard of care regimen of radiation followed by surgical resection

Bio Statement:
Dr. Rutul Patel is a Postdoctoral Associate in Dr. David Kirsch's laboratory at Duke University. He came to the United States in 2007 to pursue a Master of Science in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. After completing his MS, he worked in the field of cancer and radiation biology for four years before starting a PhD program at Case Western Reserve University. He obtained a PhD in Pharmacology in 2019. During his PhD dissertation, he worked on a project funded by NASA evaluating Galactic Cosmic Radiation effects on hematopoietic stem cell functions and hematopoietic malignancies in in vivo mouse model. His work led to four first-author research articles and one first-author review article publication. Throughout his career, he presented his work at national and international conferences, for which he received several presentations and travel awards. Currently, Dr. Patel evaluates the potential beneficial impact of immune checkpoint blockade therapy on the standard of care therapy for high-risk localized sarcomas in a primary mouse model. The goal is to access how reliable a primary model of soft-tissue sarcoma to predict clinical outcomes and understand the mechanism of an abscopal effect.

Marie Curie Award Criteria:
The Marie Curie Award was established to recognize the Scholars-in-Training travel award applicant showing the highest potential for a successful career in radiation research. The recipient is invited to speak at the annual meeting.

Michael Fry Award Lecture - Some recent implementations of mathematical models in radiation biology and oncology

Bio Statement:
Igor Shuryak, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology in the Center for Radiological Research (CRR), Department of Radiation Oncology, Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CIUMC). His previous training and experience have been interdisciplinary, starting with biology (BA from Columbia University, 2001) and medicine (MD from SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, 2010). He received a PhD degree with distinction from the department of Environmental Health Sciences (Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, 2010). Dr. Shuryak’s research focuses on quantitative modeling of a variety of biological effects of ionizing radiation. In particular, he works on modeling and prevention of radiation-induced carcinogenesis, radioresistance, non-targeted “bystander” effects, and quantification of the risks of cancer and other diseases in patients exposed to ionizing radiation during therapeutic or diagnostic medical procedures or other settings (e.g. space flight). This work relies on implementation of applied mathematics, programming, statistics and machine learning.

Michael Fry Award Criteria:
The Michael Fry Award recognizes an individual early in his/her career with exceptional accomplishments in radiation research. The intent is to recognize an individual early in his/her career, but not defined by any specific age. In keeping with the intent of the award, early in career is typically considered to be within 10 years of completion of training (e.g., post-doc, residency, fellowship). A candidate is not required to be a member of the Society, but the work upon which the nomination is based must be in one or more of the areas of radiation research.

Plenary Lecture 3 - DNA damage regulation of gene expression

Wednesday, October 21