2017 SRF Spotlight: Drs. Stewart Gaede and Gerald Wisenberg

Announced at the 2017 Lawson Impact Awards, Drs. Stewart Gaede and Gerald Wisenberg were recipients of Lawson’s annual Strategic Research Fund (SRF) competition. With their project, “Assessing acute cardiac inflammation after left-sided breast cancer radiotherapy with hybrid PET/MRI,” the Lawson researchers will explore the cardiovascular effects of radiation therapy for left-sided breast cancer.

Radiation therapy is critical to modern breast cancer treatment. It has led to improved survival rates with many patients living long lives following their treatment.

Unfortunately, when delivering radiation therapy, we cannot avoid irradiation around surrounding tissues, including the heart. This is a concern since such irradiation may lead to cardiovascular disease later in life.

Currently, the effects of radiation to the heart can only be detected one or two years afterwards. With the help of their Lawson SRF award, Drs. Gaede and Dr. Wisenberg will use PET/MR imaging to detect earlier effects of radiation and construct new guidelines and treatment strategies for left-sided breast cancer patients.

“We’re seeing more and more breast cancer survivors, but many women with left-sided breast cancer are now developing heart disease later in life,” says Dr. Gerald Wisenberg, Director of Cardiac Imaging Research at Lawson and cardiologist at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). “We hope to improve their outcomes through this research.”

Recently, Drs. Gaede and Wisenberg discovered that an increase in cardiac inflammation can be detected as early as one week after radiation using PET/MR imaging. This inflammation may be the cause of cardiovascular disease seen in women 10 to 15 years after treatment.

In the new pilot study, the researchers will follow 15 left-sided breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. They will be imaged one week before as well as one week and one year after radiation therapy with Lawson’s hybrid PET/MRI scanner at St. Joseph’s Hospital in London, Ontario.

Areas of inflammation, changes in blood flow, scar formation and fibrosis will be measured by looking at the differences between images. The data will help in the design of new treatment strategies that can hopefully decrease or eliminate inadvertent heart damage. By doing so, it could help to improve patients’ quality of life.

“The earlier we can detect the effects of radiation for left-sided breast cancer, the earlier we can intervene,” says Dr. Gaede, a Lawson imaging scientist and medical physicist at LHSC’s London Regional Cancer Program. “We hope to learn more about the ways in which radiation is affecting the heart so that we can construct new radiation techniques to better spare the heart.”

Learn more about this research:

Now in its third year, Lawson’s Strategic Research Fund (SRF) supports research projects that will advance science in alignment with Lawson’s strategic research goals, as outlined in Lawson’s 2014-2018 Strategic Plan. This year’s competition once again focused on “inflammation”. Chosen projects received $50,000 over a two-year period.