Basic Clinical Radiobiology 2017

Targeting hypoxia – holy grail of radiotherapy?

• Hypoxia targeting has come a long way, from increasing oxygen supply and enhancing perfusion, to inhibitors of specific signaling or metabolic pathways • Tumor hypoxia represents a highly dynamic condition, distributed heterogenously in tumors and changing over time • The concept of acute vs chronic hypoxia is clearly an oversimplification of a complex condition • The comeback of large doses/fx or even single doses also needs consideration of adding relatively non-toxic hypoxic sensitizers like nimorazole: “back to the future”