Dr Catarina Veiga - University College London

Dr Veiga’s research aims to improve the long-term outcomes of childhood cancer patients by making radiotherapy increasingly accurate, safe, and less harmful. Radiotherapy plays a key role in the treatment of children’s cancers but is associated with the development of harmful side-effects of treatment later in life. Predictive risk models may allow personalisation of radiotherapy treatment planning to help prevent these late effects. However, current models poorly reflect the complex spatial relationships between dose delivered, radiosensitivity, and outcome for different organs and tissues across developmental stages. There are also challenges and uncertainties in quantifying the input physical and patient-specific risk factors for late effect modelling. Dr Veiga is working to develop a new methodology required to accurately model and mitigate for the risk of radiation-induced late effects in young patients treated with radiotherapy.