New faculty recruitments – Drs. Hendrickson, Karukonda and Vaios |
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We are pleased to share the news that three of our graduating residents will be joining our faculty next summer. |
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Pete Hendrickson, MD, PhD, will be appointed Medical Instructor, effective summer 2023. Dr. Hendrickson earned his BS in biology and chemistry from DePaul University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Chicago (2009); his PhD in oncological sciences from the University of Utah (2017); and his MD from the University of Utah School of Medicine (2019). At Duke, he was named our Department’s first Radiation Oncology Research Scholar (RORS); the RORS program provides an opportunity for residents to continue mentored research after residency. Dr. Hendrickson has received numerous honors, awards and grants – notably, he is the recipient of an ASTRO Seed Grant in 2022, was inducted as a member of the Robert J. Lefkowitz Society in 2021 and was named a B. Leonard Holman Pathway Research Fellow in 2021. In his new two-year appointment as Medical Instructor, Dr. Hendrickson will spend one day a week at the Durham VA Medical Center and four days a week on academic activities, continuing his research on genetic dependencies and epigenetic vulnerabilities in fusion-positive sarcoma with generous support from the Duke Cancer Institute.
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Pooja Karukonda, MD, will be appointed Assistant Professor, effective summer 2023, and will be working with our lung cancer team. Dr. Karukonda earned her BA in neuroscience and Russian from Johns Hopkins University (2013) and her MD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (2019). She is a member of the Duke GME Residency Council; was named a Fellow for the Duke Health Disparities Research Curriculum for 2022-2023; selected as a participant in the 2023 FDA/ASCO Fellows’ Day Workshop; and named a Fellow for the 2023 ASCO/AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop. She was also recognized as a Resident-Investigator in the Duke ROR-StARR program in 2022, which provided funding for her research investigating imaging features and biomarkers predictive for response to pre-operative chemoradiation and immunotherapy for locally advanced esophageal adenocarcinoma.
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Eugene J. Vaios, MD, MBA, will be appointed Assistant Professor, effective summer 2023, and will be working with our CNS team. Dr. Vaios graduated with an AB in neurobiology from Harvard College (2014) and received his MBA from Harvard Business School (2019) and his MD from Harvard Medical School (2019). His commitment to a career as a clinician investigator is exemplified by his receipt of an NIH/NCI R38 Stimulating Access to Research in Residency (StARR) Award in 2021 and a Duke Office of Physician Scientist Development Technician Support Award in 2023. He initiated the department’s blood biobanking trial (NCT05480644) for patients with primary and metastatic brain tumors and is a sub-investigator on the Duke Brain Tumor Center’s GRETeL trial (NCT05695976) for patients with glioblastoma. These clinical trials will support his translational biomarker research which aims to develop non-invasive diagnostic and surveillance platforms for patients with brain tumors. Dr. Vaios holds a national leadership position on the ASTRO Finance & Audit Committee.
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Adamson wins Medical Physics Faculty Seed Funding Award |
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Justus Adamson, PhD, has been awarded the 2023 Medical Physics Faculty Seed Funding Award along with radiologist Dean Darnell, PhD, for the project "Feasibility of Bowel Dose Sparing During SBRT Using an Externally Controlled Magnetic Slime Robot." The $15,000 award is meant to promote new multidisciplinary research collaborations leading to new student research projects.
Drs. Adamson and Darnell's proposed research seeks to address the challenge of toxicity in the bowel due to radiation therapy via a magnetic slime-based robot designed for controlled and precise bowel displacement during radiation therapy. This holds significant promise to improve patient outcomes by reducing SBRT radiation dose to bowel, enabling SBRT target dose escalation and expanding treatment options for cases previously considered high-risk due to proximity of critical structures.
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Faculty and staff announcements |
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Congratulations to Gregory Palmer, PhD, whose promotion to Professor of Radiation Oncology, career track, was approved at the November Board of Trustees meeting. Dr. Palmer's new title is effective December 1.
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Congratulations to radiation therapists Sarah Bifano, BS, RT(R)(T); Makenzie Braswell, BS, RT(T); Chelsea Elliott, RT(T); Kelly Grimm, RT(R)(T); and Allison Womack, RT(R)(T), on their successful advancements to Clinical Ladder II.
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Once a month, our residents will have a special shout-out for team members who helped them out or went above and beyond. |
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We thank our front desk staff for their excellent patient care and responsiveness to scheduling requests. Their work is essential to operating our very busy clinic! |
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The Residency Program Anonymous Feedback Survey is available for use by all Duke Radiation Oncology team members. We value your kudos, comments, concerns and recommendations; we want to use your feedback to improve the Residency Program.
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Publications and presentations |
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Featured publication – ChatGPT as a Resource for Radiation Oncology Patients and Providers
In a recent article published in the Red Journal, a team of researchers including faculty Joseph Salama, MD, and Matthew Boyer, MD, PhD; residents Jamiluddin Qazi, MD, Christina Huang, MD, and Jim Leng, MD; and alumni David Carpenter, MD, MHS, and Bradley Ackerson, MD, examined the strengths and weaknesses of AI tool ChatGPT as a resource for both radiation oncology patients and providers. The study aims to provide a baseline for comparison in understanding the limitations of ChatGPT in specialized fields of medicine.
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Dr. Carpenter, who played a pivotal role in the research, explained that the original idea was sparked during discussions about a patient who relied heavily on ChatGPT for radiation-related queries. He noted discrepancies in the information provided by the AI model, prompting the team to investigate the areas where ChatGPT proves useful and where it might mislead in the context of radiation oncology.
"Overall, our analysis should caution both patients and providers to limit ChatGPT utilization within a radiation oncology clinical context," said Dr. Carpenter. He emphasized that ChatGPT is not specifically trained for clinical use, and efforts related to clinical applications are still in the early investigational stages.
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Dr. Boyer also noted that, as a predictive language model, ChatGPT "can produce a convincing output with appropriate syntax and grammar but with incorrect content. Our study shows that it often poorly answers questions from both a patient and physician perspective."
Floyd W, Kleber T, Carpenter D, Pasli M, Qazi J, Huang C, Leng J, Ackerson B, Pierpoint M, Salama J, Boyer M. Current Strengths and Weaknesses of ChatGPT as a Resource for Radiation Oncology Patients and Providers. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2023 Oct 28.
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Worrell SG, Goodman KA, Altorki NK, Ashman JB, Crabtree TD, Dorth J, Firestone S, Harpole DH, Hofstetter WL, Hong TS, Kissoon K, Ku GY, Molena D, Tepper JE, Watson TJ, Williams T, Willett C. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons/American Society for Radiation Oncology Updated Clinical Practice Guidelines on Multimodality Therapy for Locally Advanced Cancer of the Esophagus or Gastroesophageal Junction. Ann Thorac Surg. 2023 Oct 27.
Daniel AR, Su C, Williams NT, Li Z, Huang J, Lopez O, Luo L, Ma Y, Campos LDS, Selitsky SR, Modliszewski JL, Liu S, Hernansaiz-Ballesteros R, Mowery YM, Cardona DM, Lee CL, Kirsch DG. Transient knockdown of p53 during focal limb irradiation increases the development of sarcomas. Cancer Res Commun. 2023 Nov 2.
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Shaitelman SF, Anderson BM, Arthur DW, Bazan JG, Bellon JR, Bradfield L, Coles CE, Gerber NK, Kathpal M, Kim L, Laronga C, Meattini I, Nichols EM, Pierce LJ, Poppe MM, Spears PA, Vinayak S, Whelan T, Lyons JA. Partial Breast Irradiation for Patients With Early-Stage Invasive Breast Cancer or Ductal Carcinoma In Situ: An ASTRO Clinical Practice Guideline. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2023 Nov 14.
Tu KJ, Stewart CE, Williams NT, Ma Y, Luo L, Ghosh D, Weidenhammer LB, Floyd SR, Fan Y, Kirsch DG, Oldham M, Reitman ZJ. Single-fraction Radiation Treatment Dose Response in a Genetically Engineered Mouse Model of Medulloblastoma. Radiat Res. 2023 Nov 22.
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Photo roundup – November 2023 |
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Duke School of Medicine fourth-year medical student Bronwen Foreman presented a poster at the Society for Neuro-Oncology Conference in Vancouver, Canada in mid-November.
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Our dosimetry team treated our Duke Cancer Center radiation therapists to snacks for National Radiologic Technology Week, celebrated this year from November 5-11. |
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The Thaddeus Samulski Lectureship was held on Wednesday, November 1 at the Trent Semans Center Great Hall. Deshan Yang, PhD, and Christopher Willett, MD, welcomed guests.
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We were honored to have Dean Mary Klotman, MD, give opening remarks. Additional thanks to Mark Dewhirst, DVM, PhD, for his remembrance of Dr. Samulski.
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Departmental speaker Kyle Lafata, PhD, presented "Computational Oncology: Tumor Phenotyping, Multiscale Modeling and In Silico Experiments."
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Featured speaker Charles Mayo, PhD, presented "Data Farm to Table – Enabling Single and Multi-Institutional Integration of AI into Clinical Decision Frameworks." View the event photo gallery (if prompted, enter password 15623sam).
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The women of our Duke Regional team, representing dosimetry, therapy and physics. |
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Our women resident physicians – Drs. Vicioso Mora, Karukonda, Acklin-Wehnert, Huang, Harris and Shenker.
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Duke Women's Cancer Care Raleigh (Macon Pond). |
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Duke Raleigh Hospital Radiation Oncology. |
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Duke Cancer Center physicists and dosimetrists. |
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Duke Radiation Oncology's brachytherapy group. |
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Also celebrated on November 7 was the International Day of Medical Physics. Thank you to our physics team for ensuring safe patient care and contributing to essential research! |
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Special shoutout to Drs. Craciunescu, Li, Chuang and Raffi, who performed annual QA on the Tan Machine recently.
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Our Duke Cancer Center physicists enjoyed snacks in honor of IDMP. |
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Thanks again to the dosimetry team for celebrating our physicists! |
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Duke AI Health's virtual Electronic Health Record Study Design Workshop will be held from December 4-8. The EHR-SDW is targeted toward individuals interested in learning about how to work with and conduct studies using electronic health records data.
Duke AI Health's FAIR HEALTH (Fostering AI/ML Research for Health Equity and Learning Transformation) workshop will be held on Monday, January 8, 2024 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in person at Sarah Duke Gardens in Kirby Horton Hall. This event is open to anyone who is passionate about advancing healthcare through innovation while ensuring health equity and fairness in clinical algorithms.
The Annual DUHS Safety and Quality Conference will be held on Thursday, April 11, 2024 at the Trent Semans Center Great Hall. Abstract submissions are due by Sunday, December 31.
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. . . and in case you missed it |
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Duke Health has launched an advertising campaign focusing on cancer care. Using real patients, real care teams and real stories, the commercials aim to motivate patients to call the new Oncology Access Center to schedule appointments.
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