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Professor of Oncological Imaging
University of Cambridge
Title: Unravelling Tumor Heterogeneity in Ovarian Cancer Using a Radiogenomics Approach
Abstract: Cancer is caused by genetic (DNA) and epigenetic alternations and frequently arises as a clonal growth from a founder cell. The subclonal heterogeneity provides the basis for inter-metastatic heterogeneity which is of utmost clinical importance. New tumor sampling techniques and circulating tumor DNA methods may allow for more comprehensive evaluation of clonal composition. As both primary tumors and metastatic lesions are spatially and temporally hetergeneous they would require multiple biopsies to extract and analyze small portions of tumor tissue, which still doesn't allow for a complete characterization of the tumor genomic landscape. Therefore, imaging has great potential for a comprehensive evaluation of the entire tumor burden in ovarian cancer as it is noninvasive and is already often repeated during treatment in routine practice, on the contrary of genomics or proteomics, which are all still challenging to implement into clinical routine. While initial retrospective studies linking phenotype with genotype in ovarian cancer have shown high prognostic power they do not provide any spatial information as quantitative imaging features are generated and averaged over the entire tumor assuming that tumors are hetergeneous but well mixed. This approach ignore spatial hetergeneity readily apparent on imaging. Indeed recent genomics work has highlighted the presence of intratumor variation in gene mutation and expression. However little effort is any has been put into integrating imaging, histopathology and genomics and thus there is a clear need for well designed prospective studies focused on meaningful integration of phenotype and genotype rather than genomics in isolation.
About: Evis Sala is a Professor of Radiology and Chair of Department of Radiology and Radiotherapy at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCC, Rome. Italy. Previously she was the Professor of Oncological Imaging at the University of Cambridge, UK and co-led the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre Advanced Cancer Imaging and the Integrated Cancer Medicine Programs. From 2012 to 2018, she served as the Professor of Radiology at Weil Cornell Medical College and Chief of Body Imaging Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Her work in the field of radiogenomics and artificial intelligence (AI) integrates quantitative imaging methods for tumor detection, evaluation of tumor heterogeneity and prediction of outcome. She is the cofounder and CMO of Lucida Medical Ltd., focusing on developing software to help clinicians find cancer, using AI and MRI.
In recognition for her contribution to oncological imaging she was elected Fellow of the International Cancer Imaging Society in 2013, the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in 2015, the European Society for Urogenital Radiology in 2018 and was awarded an Honorary Membership of Radiology Society of North America in 2022 and Japanese Society of Radiology in 2024.
Attendance is open to the Stanford and AIMI affiliate community. Please contact aimicenter@stanford.edu for the Zoom link if you would like to attend virtually.