Episode 22: Superstar Nancy Lee talks us through hypoxia, functional imaging and the future of deescalation!

Welcome back to another episode of Deep Margin.

I'm here with Ben.

And this is an episode that both Ben and I have been looking forward to for a long, long time.

I know we've had lots of excellent guests on, but this is really stratospheric for us.

So we're here with a guest who really needs no introduction, but it's Nancy Lee.

Nancy, do you want to tell us about yourself? And really, if the listeners don't know who you are, I think they should probably just switch off and listen to another podcast.

But do tell us about yourself and we'll get chatting.

Great.

Thank you, Will.

And thank you, Ben.

It's really my honor to be here.

Very exciting.

I'm a head and neck radiation oncologist.

I work at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, but also the vice chairman of the department.

And one of my role is focusing on experimental therapeutics.

So as I With that hat, I often think about how can I apply this to head and neck cancer.

And so very exciting to be here.

I also have another hat.

I'm the service chief of proton therapy, which, of course, is always a hot topic right now.

U.S. versus U.K. positive negative study.

So that's another thing that's happening.

So I'm very happy to be here.

Okay, great.

The Ryder Cup of heavy particles, I think, is ongoing, you know.

Yeah.

So, Nancy, we're going to talk today, we're hoping to talk about hypoxia and its relevance in radiation, particularly the head and neck, and then perhaps some go through some of the data that you've recently published around this and perhaps how the future looks in this.

So do you want to tell us about your hypoxia journey, if you can call it that, and how we've got to where we are?