ESTRO 2025 - Abstract Book

S151

Invited Speaker

ESTRO 2025

such strategies. Such efforts will eventually improve tumor control, survival, and quality of life for patients through tailored therapies. Tumors are increasingly being detected at earlier stages. This necessitates intensified research into radiotherapy of early-stage malignancies vs. other local treatment options, most prominently surgery and endoscopic approaches with high quality follow-up data needed for detailed assessment of morbidity and quality of life. In advanced cancers, radiotherapy will remain a crucial component of multidisciplinary cancer care in a clinical setting characterized by rapidly changing systemic and immunotherapeutic treatment strategies. This calls for new research approaches for defining optimal radiotherapy dosage and dose distributions in combination approaches. Classical randomized trials continue to be the gold standard but not all of the many treatment approaches and individual combinations can be tested using such rigorous methodology. Large multicenter repositories of detailed treatment plans and application documentations, combined with clinical outcome data, biological data of tumor characteristics, and AI, will significantly contribute to exploring radiotherapy details in the multidisciplinary setting. In addition, preclinical experiments on advanced tumor and normal tissue models will continue to play an important role in further evolving precision radiation oncology. Overall radiation oncology research and care in the 2030s will build on and expand its multidisciplinary and multiprofessional foundation developed over the past decades, and improve clinical outcomes through individualized care by optimal integration of clinical science with latest biology and technology.

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Speaker Abstracts Patients as partners for guiding clinical research David John Chuter Vice Chair, DiCE, Brussels, Belgium. Chair, ICPV (Independent Cancer Patient's Voice), London, United Kingdom

Abstract:

Patients as partners in guiding clinical research, adding the experience, expertise and perspectives of being a patient or carer to research and ensuring the patient are at the heart of all research. Our unique experiences is not something that can be taught in any clinical research classroom. Research is about the patient, their treatment and their outcomes, and in this day and age patients have more knowledge and access to knowledge about their condition, treatment and research trials which go beyond the standard care, so having patients and carers being involved is crucial in research from the beginning, at the design and development, delivery and dissemination stages, and sometimes at the conception stage of a research question. Patient Advocates come from all walks of life, most do not have a medical or research background but all have expertise and skills from their own work, added to their patient experience can give perspectives and views that researchers may not be aware of. There is still uncertainties and challenges around patients being actively being involved at all stages of a research project. How do you define patient involvement, engagement and participation in research is always confusing for researchers, and it is only the last decade or so that the role of a patient has changed from merely a research participant to an active and involved research partner. One of the most important roles of patient partners is the translation of the research into lay summaries for dissemination to the world, to the public and media in a document that can stand alone to explain the research, be it clinical or non-clinical.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2059702924007154