Genomic modeling of radiation toxicity

Cancer patients that receive radiation as a therapy for their disease will sometimes suffer severe or life-threatening side effects caused by their radiation treatment. Currently there are no effective management strategies for these side effects. We intend to use the data in the UKBiobank to build models that will help us predict which cancer patients are at higher risk for developing severe side effects due to radiation therapy. The duration of the project is dependent on how long our statistical analyses will take, which we think will be approximately 3 years. Results from our work may help guide treatment of cancer patients that are at higher risk for developing severe side effects due to radiation treatment.