AUSTRALASIAN GASTRO INTESTINAL TRIALS GROUP

Dr. Eugene Koay is a physician scientist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, who specialises in radiation therapy for patients with hepatobiliary and pancreatic cancers, and develops applications of the physical sciences to cancer for the purposes of early detection, biomarker development, and therapeutic management. He received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Rice University in 2001. He completed the MD/PhD Program at Baylor College of Medicine/Rice University in 2009, with a PhD in Bioengineering. His residency training was in Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2009-2014). He then joined faculty at MD Anderson where he established his clinical and research foci. He leads the Cancer Physics and Engineering Laboratory at MD Anderson.

This lab studies how the physical properties of tumors relate to the biological underpinnings of the disease. Recent work from the lab has shown how radiomics and artificial intelligence-based approaches may lead to clinically-relevant methods to stratify and manage hepatobiliary and pancreatic cancers (Koay et al, JCI, 2014; Amer et al , Cancer, 2018; Koay et al, Clin Cancer Res 2018). Dr. Koay’s lab also collaborates with mathematical modelers to apply physical models of therapeutic delivery (Pascal et al, Proc Nat Acad Sci, 2013; Butner et al, Sci Advances 2020) and tumor growth (Koay et al, Clin Cancer Res 2018). These studies describe how patient-specific parameters may be used to detect cancer earlier, predict treatment response, and improve cancer outcomes.