Prestigious awards at the Department of Radiation Oncology

Several specialists of the Freiburg Department of Radiation Oncology have been awarded prestigious prizes and positions for their excellent research and clinical work.

Prof. Dr. med. Anca-L. Grosu, Medical Director of the Department for Radiation Oncology at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg, was awarded this year's Alfred Breit Prize for her scientific work on the integration of biological imaging into radiation therapy planning.

The prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, is awarded annually by the German Society for Radiation Oncology (DEGRO) and is one of the most prestigious awards in this field.

“I am very happy about this great recognition and appreciation of our work, which would not be possible without the excellent cooperation with the colleagues at the Tumor Center Freiburg - CCCF", Grosu acknowledges. Together with her team, the radiation therapist is developing new methods that allow for precise, personalized and individualized radiation treatment with the help of biological imaging. In biological imaging, metabolic processes of tumors are made visible, which makes a more precise differentiation between cancer cells and healthy cells possible. “With this method, we can protect the healthy tissue around the tumor much better. This approach is an important step towards personalized cancer therapy,” Grosu says.

About Prof. Dr. med. Anca-L. Grosu:

Grosu studied medicine at the University of Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg) in Romania. She then worked at the University Hospital rechts der Isar of the Technical University Munich from 1990 to 2006. After a year of research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, Grosu became director of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg in 2007. In 2018, she was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and has been Deputy Senator of the Radiology Section of the Leopoldina Academy since January 2020.

The Alfred Breit Prize commemorates one of the pioneers of modern radiation therapy, Prof. Dr. Alfred Breit, and has been awarded annually by DEGRO since 2012. The award recognizes outstanding research and developments in radiation oncology that contribute to discernible advances in cancer therapy.

The head of the Department of Medical Physics at the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg was thus elected President of the largest scientific society for medical physics in Europe. The clinical focus of Baltas is the development and establishment of new physical-technical methods in radiation oncology.

PD Dr. Constantinos Zamboglou, senior physician at the Clinic for Radiation Medicine at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg, was awarded this year's 5,000 Euro Hermann Holthusen Prize from the German Society for Radiation Oncology (DEGRO) for his habilitation thesis on prostate cancer treatment.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and is usually treated with high-dose irradiation of the entire prostate. Zamboglou's pioneering research integrates modern imaging techniques into radiation therapy planning for patients with prostate tumors. Tumors can be localized even more precisely and their biological properties can be taken into account in cancer therapy. As a result, only the tumor is irradiated in high doses and adjacent healthy tissue is spared. “No tumor and no patient is like the other. Thanks to the personalized radiation therapy planning, we move away from treatment according to uniform standards,” Zamboglou explains.

Funding from the Decade Against Cancer

The innovative approach is being researched further in a large study funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the National Decade against Cancer. The aim is to compare conventional radiation therapy with targeted radiation of the tumor in newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients. “Radiation therapy has made enormous progress in recent years. We want our patients to benefit from these latest developments as quickly as possible,” Zamboglou says.

The Hermann Holthusen Prize commemorates a pioneer of modern radiation therapy, Prof. Dr. Hermann Holthusen, and has been awarded annually by DEGRO since 1998. The award recognizes outstanding research work by young scientists.

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