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Christopher M. Nutting (born 5 April 1968) is a British Professor of Clinical Oncology and medical consultant, specializing in head and neck cancers, who has helped develop Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT), [1] an advanced form of Radiation therapy.
Nutting received a BSc with 1st class honours (Medicine and Cell Pathology) from University College London in 1989 and Middlesex Hospital, University of London. In 1992 he was awarded a 1st Class MBBS from Middlesex Hospital at the University of London. In 2001 he received a Medical Doctorate (MD Res) at The Institute of Cancer Research, University of London, and he was awarded a PhD from City University London in 2012.[ citation needed ]
In 2001 he was appointed Consultant Clinical Oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Clinical Oncology at the Institute of Cancer Research; in 2002 he was appointed Clinical Director of the Head and Neck Unit at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital. [2] and in 2003 he became National Clinical Lead in Head and Neck Cancer, appointed by the Department of Health (UK) and the Cancer Services Collaborative.
In 2007 he was elected Honorary Faculty member at The Institute for Cancer Research. In 2009 he was appointed Co-Chair of The Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy and Radiobiology Working Group of the NCRI, and between 2006-12 he chaired the National Cancer Research Institute's Head and Neck Cancer Clinical Studies Group (CSG).[ citation needed ]In 2021, he was appointed Medical Director of a new Royal Marsden Private Care facility in Cavendish Square, London.
Nutting was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences [3] in 2018 and Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2019.[ citation needed ] He is also President Elect [4] of the Oncology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and will serve as President for the years 2020-2022.
In 2022, Nutting was appointed as a Senior Investigator of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), following open competition by one of England's leading medical research organisations. This is in addition to his roles as Consultant Clinical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden and Professor of Radiotherapy at The Institute of Cancer Research, London.
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In collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Research, he and his team at the Royal Marsden Hospital have managed a series of randomised trials using IMRT aimed at reducing the potentially debilitating side-effects of radiotherapy treatment for head and neck cancers.
The research has involved four trials – PARSPORT, [5] COSTAR, [6] ART DECO [7] and DARS, [8] which is investigating whether IMRT reduces difficulty in swallowing for patients with throat cancer. Each has focussed on different cancer sites respectively to assess the impact in reducing the following principal side-effects - Xerostomia (dry mouth), hearing loss, long-term or permanent damage to the larynx and difficult in swallowing.
The beneficial outcomes in the PARSPORT trial, [9] was instrumental in prompting the UK Department of Health to recommend IMRT to all cancer networks in the UK treating head and neck cancers. [10]
In 2014, Nutting was instrumental in the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute for Cancer Research being granted Medical Research Council funding to install one of Britain's first MR Linac machines which combines two technologies for the first time – an MRI scanner to precisely locate the tumour and a linear accelerator that will accurately deliver doses of radiation even to moving tumours. The MR Linac was installed at the Royal Marsden's site in Sutton, Surrey, and treated its first patients in 2019.
In 2018 Nutting was elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences, one of the highest accolades in medicine and he is one of the youngest recipients of the award.
In 2018 Nutting played a significant role in a campaign to extend vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV) to adolescent boys in the UK after girls aged 12–13 had been routinely given the immunisation via schools since 2008. [11] The campaign was successful with the UK government announcing in July 2018 that it would introduce gender neutral vaccinations for all 12 and 13 year-olds following a recommendation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) which stated that a gender-neutral programme would be cost-effective.
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Radiation therapy or radiotherapy is a treatment using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer therapy to either kill or control the growth of malignant cells. It is normally delivered by a linear particle accelerator. Radiation therapy may be curative in a number of types of cancer if they are localized to one area of the body, and have not spread to other parts. It may also be used as part of adjuvant therapy, to prevent tumor recurrence after surgery to remove a primary malignant tumor. Radiation therapy is synergistic with chemotherapy, and has been used before, during, and after chemotherapy in susceptible cancers. The subspecialty of oncology concerned with radiotherapy is called radiation oncology. A physician who practices in this subspecialty is a radiation oncologist.
External beam radiation therapy (EBRT) is a form of radiotherapy that utilizes a high-energy collimated beam of ionizing radiation, from a source outside the body, to target and kill cancer cells. A radiotherapy beam is composed of particles which travel in a consistent direction; each radiotherapy beam consists of one type of particle intended for use in treatment, though most beams contain some contamination by other particle types.
A radiation oncologist is a specialist physician who uses ionizing radiation in the treatment of cancer. Radiation oncology is one of the three primary specialties, the other two being surgical and medical oncology, involved in the treatment of cancer. Radiation can be given as a curative modality, either alone or in combination with surgery and/or chemotherapy. It may also be used palliatively, to relieve symptoms in patients with incurable cancers. A radiation oncologist may also use radiation to treat some benign diseases, including benign tumors. In some countries, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are controlled by a single oncologist who is a "clinical oncologist". Radiation oncologists work closely with other physicians such as surgical oncologists, interventional radiologists, internal medicine subspecialists, and medical oncologists, as well as medical physicists and technicians as part of the multi-disciplinary cancer team. Radiation oncologists undergo four years of oncology-specific training whereas oncologists who deliver chemotherapy have two years of additional training in cancer care during fellowship after internal medicine residency in the United States.
In medicine, proton therapy, or proton radiotherapy, is a type of particle therapy that uses a beam of protons to irradiate diseased tissue, most often to treat cancer. The chief advantage of proton therapy over other types of external beam radiotherapy is that the dose of protons is deposited over a narrow range of depth; hence in minimal entry, exit, or scattered radiation dose to healthy nearby tissues.
M. Krishnan Nair was an Indian oncologist. He was the founding director of the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, a director of the S.U.T. Institute of Oncology, and Trivandrum Cancer Center(TCC), part of SUT Royal Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) and a professor at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences & Research in Kochi. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri in 2001 for his contributions in the cancer care field.
The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) is the professional body responsible for the specialties of clinical oncology and clinical radiology throughout the United Kingdom. Its role is to advance the science and practice of radiology and oncology, further public education, and set appropriate professional standards of practice. The college sets and monitors the educational curriculum for those training to enter the profession and administers the Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists exams. It is a registered charity in the United Kingdom (no. 211540).
Fast neutron therapy utilizes high energy neutrons typically between 50 and 70 MeV to treat cancer. Most fast neutron therapy beams are produced by reactors, cyclotrons (d+Be) and linear accelerators. Neutron therapy is currently available in Germany, Russia, South Africa and the United States. In the United States, one treatment center is operational, in Seattle, Washington. The Seattle center uses a cyclotron which produces a proton beam impinging upon a beryllium target.
In radiotherapy, radiation treatment planning (RTP) is the process in which a team consisting of radiation oncologists, radiation therapist, medical physicists and medical dosimetrists plan the appropriate external beam radiotherapy or internal brachytherapy treatment technique for a patient with cancer.
Tomotherapy is a type of radiation therapy treatment machine. In tomotherapy a thin radiation beam is modulated as it rotates around the patient, while they are moved through the bore of the machine. The name comes from the use of a strip-shaped beam, so that only one “slice” of the target is exposed at any one time by the radiation. The external appearance of the system and movement of the radiation source and patient can be considered analogous to a CT scanner, which uses lower doses of radiation for imaging. Like a conventional machine used for X-ray external beam radiotherapy, a linear accelerator generates the radiation beam, but the external appearance of the machine, the patient positioning, and treatment delivery is different. Conventional linacs do not work on a slice-by-slice basis but typically have a large area beam which can also be resized and modulated.
Image-guided radiation therapy is the process of frequent imaging, during a course of radiation treatment, used to direct the treatment, position the patient, and compare to the pre-therapy imaging from the treatment plan. Immediately prior to, or during, a treatment fraction, the patient is localized in the treatment room in the same position as planned from the reference imaging dataset. An example of IGRT would include comparison of a cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) dataset, acquired on the treatment machine, with the computed tomography (CT) dataset from planning. IGRT would also include matching planar kilovoltage (kV) radiographs or megavoltage (MV) images with digital reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) from the planning CT.
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (ónkos), meaning "tumor", "volume" or "mass". Oncology is concerned with:
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