CU Cancer Center News and Stories

Oncologists have many tools they use to treat cancer, and one of the most commonly used is radiation therapy. In use since the early 1900s, radiation therapy uses high-energy particles or waves — including x-rays, gamma rays, electron beams, and protons — to destroy or damage cancer cells. The machine that delivers radiation therapy has a head that rotates 360 degrees, and patients lie on a special bench that swivels, allowing the radiation to be delivered from any angle.

Greg Glasgow | July 13, 2022

When it comes to using radiation against lung cancer, preliminary clinical studies were pretty clear: More is better. So why did a large phase 3 clinical trial find exactly the opposite – that stage III non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with higher doses of radiation actually had shorter overall survival than patients treated with lower-dose radiation?

Cancer Center | June 27, 2019

When Tyler Robin, MD, PhD, graduates from the Radiation Oncology Residency Program at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus at the end of June, he won’t have to move far – after graduation, Robin will make the leap from trainee to researcher, joining CU faculty as an assistant professor in the CU School of Medicine Department of Radiation Oncology where he hopes to be involved with clinical trials testing new uses of radiation as a component of cancer care. A New Investigator Award from the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) and NRG Oncology will help Robin expand the scope of his clinical trial involvement to the national level, while bringing new, innovative clinical trials to cancer patients in Colorado.

Cancer Center | June 05, 2019

More than a decade ago, radiation oncologists noticed a nifty phenomenon: Sometimes radiation used locally against a tumor could excite the immune system to attack cancer systemically throughout the body. It was as if the use of radiation had somehow awoken the immune system to the presence of cancer. Since then, a massive effort has been underway to harness this effect, hoping to create this systemic anti-cancer activity with combinations of radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

Cancer Center | April 16, 2019