Haas-Kogan to Present RSNA 2017 Annual Oration in Radiation Oncology

Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD, will present the Annual Oration in Radiation Oncology, entitled, “Personalized Medicine and Radiation Oncology,” on Wednesday, Nov. 29 at 1:30 p.m. in Room E450A.

In her lecture, Dr. Haas-Kogan will focus on how personalized medicine has already changed radiation oncology and how it will change the specialty in the future. This includes the promise of radiomic imaging, which is successfully defining imaging biomarkers based on quantitative descriptions of tumor phenotypes to improve predictions of treatment response and prognosis while reducing radiation doses to organs at risk and maximizing doses to cancerous lesions. In addition, Dr. Haas-Kogan will discuss the commitment needed from radiation oncologists to engineer drugs and design approaches that target a tumor specifically and spare a patient’s normal tissues. Finally, she will explore the new class of MRI devices that is creating a paradigm shift in radiation therapy delivery. These high-precision radiation therapy techniques can deliver high doses of radiation to tumors with sub-millimeter accuracy all while providing higher soft tissue resolution, functional imaging and continuous imaging without exposing patients to ionizing radiation.

Dr. Haas-Kogan is chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. She holds the Radiation Oncology Endowed Professorship at Harvard Medical School and is a member of the Association of American Physicians.

Dr. Haas-Kogan received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, magna cum laude, from Harvard University. While in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. J. Michael Bishop. She received her MD from UCSF and also completed a radiation oncology residency and post-doctoral fellowship in molecular neuro-oncology. She received a 1997 RSNA Research Scholar Grant for her work in molecular determinants of the cellular response to ionizing radiation. While at UCSF she served as vice chair for research and as educational program director. She has received several teaching awards including the Henry J. Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching from UCSF School of Medicine and the prestigious Joseph L. Barrett Award for Teaching at Harvard University.

Throughout, Dr. Haas-Kogan has maintained a productive, well-funded basic science laboratory in which she investigates signaling aberrations in human cancers, including adult and pediatric brain tumors. She has been the principal investigator on many grants funded by NIH/NCI, philanthropic organizations, and industry collaborations.

Dr. Haas-Kogan is a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel appointed to inform the scientific direction and goals of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Moonshot.