Rad Chat

Naman Julka-Anderson and Jo McNamara catch up with Dr. Mike Merchant as part of the Education and Workforce Development Series (Part 26)
Discussion about Mike’s career, proton beam therapy, current and future research projects.
 
To use this podcast as CPD, look at these reflection points: 
1) Read the associated papers posted alongside this podcast episode and reflect upon your learning on this topic. 
2) Undertake some scoping to see what referral mechanisms are in place for patients who maybe eligible for proton beam therapy. 
3) Evaluate the considerations required for a proton beam therapy department when compared to a conventional external beam radiotherapy department.
4) Consider the benefits and challenges around proton beam therapy.

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Links from podcast:
The Christie, Proton Beam Therapy 
https://www.christie.nhs.uk/patients-and-visitors/services/protons
Research at The Christie, Proton Beam Therapy https://www.christie.nhs.uk/research-and-innovation
Proton beam therapy for patients with breast cancer https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/first-uk-proton-beam-therapy-trial-for-breast-cancer-launches
Dr. Mike Merchant ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8422-5255 
Estimating the percentage of patients who might benefit from proton beam therapy vs x-ray radiotherapy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35220723/ 
Proposing a clinical model for RBE on proton track-end counts: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36642109/ 
Trial of wearable health technology for cancer patients open: https://mft.nhs.uk/2022/01/26/trial-of-wearable-health-technology-for-cancer-patients-opens/ Mechanistic modelling supports entwined rather than exclusively competitive DNA double-strand break repair pathway: https://christie.openrepository.com/handle/10541/621820 

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