Paul Meijnders

University of Antwerp | UA · Department of radiation oncology, Iridium Cancer Network

Purpose: Involved Node Radiotherapy (INRT) was introduced in the EORTC/LYSA/FIL H10 trial, a large multicenter trial in early stage Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL). The current study aimed to evaluate the quality of INRT in this trial. Methods and materials: A retrospective, descriptive study was initiated to evaluate INRT in a representative sample encom...

Background and purpose Head and neck cancer (HNC) patients experiencing anatomical changes during their radiotherapy (RT) course may benefit from adaptive RT (ART). We investigated the sensitivity of an electronic portal imaging device (EPID)-based in-vivo dosimetry (EIVD) system to detect patients that require ART and identified its limitations....

PurposeLittle is known about the employment situation of long-term Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) survivors despite their young age at diagnosis and the favorable prognosis of the disease. In this cross-sectional study, we aim to describe the employment situation in a cohort of long-term HL survivors compared to the general population and investigate the as...

Studies have shown higher survival rates for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) treated within clinical trials compared to patients treated outside clinical trials. However, endpoints are often limited to overall survival (OS). In this retrospective cohort study, we investigated the effect of trial participation on OS, the incidence of relapse, se...

Background and purpose Spinal stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) requires high precision. We evaluate the intrafraction motion during cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) guided SABR with different immobilization techniques. Material and methods Fifty-seven consecutive patients were treated for 62 spinal lesions with SABR with position...

Background Although most patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) initially benefit from treatment with androgen receptor signaling inhibitors (ARSi), resistance inevitably occurs. Hence, we investigated the prognostic value of automated circulating tumor cell (CTC) and tumor-derived extracellular vesicle (tdEV) enumera...

Objectives: To provide reference values for the European Organisation for Treatment and Research of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ-C30) in advanced-stage Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) patients and 5-year HL survivors. The QLQ-C30 is the most widely used cancer-specific questionnaire to assess Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). Met...

Purpose Increasing evidence suggests that patients with a limited number of metastases benefit from stereotactic ablative radiation therapy (SABR) to all lesions. However, the optimal dose and fractionation remain unknown. This is particularly true for bone and lymph node metastases. Therefore, a prospective single-center dose-escalation trial was...

Advantages of using intraoperative radiotherapy with electrons (IOERT) as a boosting modality in breast‐conserving therapy include the direct visualization of the tumor bed, a reduced skin dose, and patient convenience. We report oncological outcome, postoperative complication rate, and mammographic changes on follow‐up imaging in women treated at...

Background To investigate progression free survival (PFS), local control (LC) and overall survival (OS) outcomes for patients treated with spine hypofractionated stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) and to evaluate possible predictors of rapid progression in view of a correct patient selection for this potentially curative SABR. Materials and...

Objectives There are more than 12 million long-term survivors of cancer in Europe. Yet, research on outcomes of cancer treatment has not reached its full potential due to operational, regulatory and methodological constrains. The current study aims to show the complementary roles between clinical research and population-based cancer registry in thi...

Aim: To provide an overview of Radiation Oncology (RO) teaching to medical students around Europe. Materials and methods: An electronic survey was sent to European academic teachers of RO. The survey focused on the teaching of RO to medical students throughout their undergraduate education. Results: A total of 87 academic RO teachers from 29 c...

Background: In an oligometastatic setting, metastasis-directed treatment could render patients disease free, possibly for a protracted interval. Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) is one of the treatment modalities that can be offered to these patients. In addition, the radiobiological qualities of SABR are promising for the use in perceive...

Background and purpose: In early-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) the target volume nowadays consists of the volume of the originally involved nodes. Delineation of this volume on a post-chemotherapy CT-scan is challenging. We report on the interobserver variability in target volume definition and its impact on resulting treatment plans. Mat...

Soft tissue sarcomas are uncommon tumours of mesenchymal origin, most commonly arising in the extremities. Treatment includes surgical resection in combination with radiotherapy. Resection margins are of paramount importance in surgical treatment of soft tissue sarcomas but unambiguous guidelines for ideal margins of resection are still missing as...

Background: A subset of patients experience a biochemical recurrence following radical prostatectomy. Radiotherapy can salvage those patients, provided that all disease is encompassed within the target volume. We hypothesized that this can be achieved more adequately with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided treatment planning. Material and me...

Among 6039 patients with Hodgkin lymphoma enrolled in nine successive EORTC-GELA randomized trials (1964-2004), the effect of individual radiotherapy and chemotherapy doses on the risk of developing cardiac disease was investigated. We specifically analysed the added value from radiation dose-volume metrics on cardiac risk prediction as well as the...

Background Cardiovascular disease after treatment is an important concern in cancer survivors. However, knowledge of cardiotoxicity is limited by the retrospective nature of data, which often does not contain details of treatment exposure. To facilitate individual risk counselling of patients, we aimed to quantify the eff ect of anthracyclines, vi...

Background Regions within solid tumours often experience oxygen deprivation, which is associated with resistance to chemotherapy and irradiation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the radiosensitising effect of gemcitabine and its main metabolite dFdU under normoxia versus hypoxia and to determine whether hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) is i...

How does the successful cryopreservation of semen affect the odds of post-treatment fatherhood among Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) survivors? Among 334 survivors who wanted to have children, the availability of cryopreserved semen doubled the odds of post-treatment fatherhood. Cryopreservation of semen is the easiest, safest and most accessible way to safe...

Conflict of interest: The authors have nothing to disclose and indicate no potential conflict of interest. 1 We present the case of a 56-year old patient with primary squamous cell carcinoma of the breast. She underwent a radical mastectomy with adjuvant chemotherapy, consisting of carboplatinum and gemcitabine, and consecutive radiotherapy. Twenty...

PURPOSEWe investigated the impact of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) on parenthood, including factors influencing parenthood probability, by comparing long-term HL survivors with matched general population controls. PATIENTS AND METHODSA Life Situation Questionnaire was sent to 3,604 survivors treated from 1964 to 2004 in successive clinical trials. Responde...

Introduction: Regions within solid tumors often experience mild to severe oxygen deprivation, associated with resistance to chemotherapy and irradiation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the radiosensitizing effect of gemcitabine and its main metabolite dFdU under normal versus reduced oxygen conditions and to determine whether hypoxia-inducib...

Since 1964, the EORTC Lymphoma Group has conducted nine consecutive randomized phase III trials on early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma aimed at increasing efficacy while decreasing short- and long-term toxicities. Event-free and overall survival significantly improved from about 50% and 70%, respectively, in the early years to over 80% and 90%, respective...

In this large cohort of Hodgkin's lymphoma survivors with long follow-up, we estimated the impact of treatment regimens on premature ovarian failure (POF) occurrence and motherhood, including safety of nonalkylating chemotherapy and dose-response relationships for alkylating chemotherapy and age at treatment. The Life Situation Questionnaire was se...

It is known that gemcitabine and difluorodeoxyuridine (dFdU) have radiosensitizing properties. It has become evident that solid tumors often contain hypoxic regions and that this is one of the causes of resistance or decreased sensitivity to cancer therapy. In hypoxic conditions, the transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), is upre...

Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL Introduction: It has been well documented that the efficacy of both chemotherapy and radiotherapy is directly linked with an adequate oxygen tension, and that hypoxic regions in solid tumors often contain viable cells that are intrinsically more resistant to anticancer treatm...

Whereas radiosensitization by gemcitabine is well studied under normal oxygen conditions, little is known about its radiosensitizing potential under reduced oxygen conditions. Therefore, the present study evaluated the impact of anoxia on gemcitabine-mediated radiosensitization. The clonogenic assay was performed in three isogenic A549 cell lines d...

Proceedings: AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010‐‐ Apr 17‐21, 2010; Washington, DC Introduction: It has been well documented that the efficacy of both chemotherapy and radiotherapy is directly linked with an adequate oxygen tension, and that hypoxic regions in solid tumors often contain viable cells that are intrinsically more resistant to anticancer t...

Introduction: Solid tumors often contain hypoxic regions. In hypoxic conditions, the transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), is upregulated. HIF-1 is responsible for the cellular and adaptive responses of tumours to survive in hypoxic conditions. HIF-1 is also thought to influence genes involved in resistance to therapy. In this s...

To avoid complications in total body irradiation (TBI), it is important to achieve a homogeneous dose distribution throughout the body and to deliver a correct dose to the lung which is an organ at risk. The purpose of this work was to validate the TBI dose protocol and to check the accuracy of the 3D dose calculations of the treatment planning sys...

Based on their different mechanisms of action, non-overlapping side effects and radiosensitising potential, combining the antimetabolites pemetrexed (multitargeted antifolate, MTA) and gemcitabine (2',2'-difluorodeoxycytidine, dFdC) with irradiation (RT) seems promising. This in vitro study, for the first time, presents the triple combination of MT...

The clonogenic assay is the method of choice to determine cell reproductive death after in vitro irradiation treatment. Traditionally, colony quantification has been performed by manual counting, a very laborious, time-consuming and rather subjective task. In this study, we compared manual counting by two skilled investigators with automated counti...

Background: Little is known about the longitudinal course of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma during their post-treatment follow-up and re-adaptation to normal life. We report on the HRQoL of patients treated in the randomised H8 trial of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORT...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the radiosensitising effect of gemcitabine, in terms of cell-cycle progression, induction of apoptosis, and to investigate the molecular events regulating apoptosis. Tumour cells were treated with gemcitabine, radiation, or the combination. 0-72 h after treatment, cells were collected for cell-cycle analysis an...

Hypoxic tumour regions often contain viable cells that are more resistant to chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, making it of key importance to analyse new combination treatments under both normoxic and hypoxic conditions. In this study, the impact of moderate hypoxia and anoxia on cellular characteristics was investigated in isogenic A549 cells diff...

To develop easily applicable guidelines for the determination of initially involved lymph nodes to be included in the radiation fields. Patients with supra-diaphragmatic Hodgkin lymphoma. All the imaging procedures were carried out with patients in the treatment position. The prechemotherapy PET/CT was coregistered with the postchemotherapy CT simu...

The cure rate of cancer in adolescents is high but between 10% and 40% of them will develop incurable disease depending on tumor type and prognostic factors. These patients will need palliative care defined as supportive care to optimize comfort, function and social support of the patient and the family. Palliative care should include attention to...

The author agrees with Dr. Suresh Senan's comments on the necessity to take into account the mobility of mediasstinal lymph nodes and daily variations in the patient setup. Hodgkin lymphoma is a primary disease of the lymph nodes, with chemotherapy as its treatment. INRT is designed to deliver radiation not to residual lymph nodes but to the initia...

To describe new concepts for radiation fields in patients with early stage Hodgkin lymphoma treated with a combined modality. Patients receiving combined modality therapy with at least 2 or 3 cycles of chemotherapy prior to radiotherapy. Pre- and postchemotherapy cervical and thoracic CT scans are mandatory and should be performed, whenever possibl...

To evaluate the impact of the quality of involved-field radiotherapy (IFRT) on clinical outcome in patients with advanced Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) in complete remission (CR) after six to eight cycles of mechlorethamine, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone-doxorubicin, bleomycin, and vinblastine (MOPP-ABV) chemotherapy. A retrospective review of cl...

Purpose : To analyse tumor characteristics, survival and patterns of failure in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer. Methods : Between 1973 and 1998 200 patients with thyroid cancer were treated at our department. 55% of patients presented with a papular carcinoma (PC) (stage presentation : stage I 48%, st II 15%, st III 28%, st IV 3%) and...

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) with topical application of 5-aminolaevulinic acid (ALA, 20% w/w) was used to treat superficial basal cell carcinoma (BCC, 16 patients), Morbus Bowen (one patient), basal cell naevus syndrome (BCNS, three patients), actinic keratosis (AK, two patients), chronic inflammation (CI, one patient), and metastasized BCC (one pat...

Seven rat bronchial cancers of various grades of differentiation were used to study responses to single doses of cytostatic drugs (mitomycin C, cisplatin, methotrexate, TCNU, CCNU, ifosfamide) when growing subcutaneously or in the lung. The endpoint was growth delay as calculated from tumour volume measurements using vernier callipers or radiograph...