Targeted Radiation Clinic benefits from CTRC Cabinet gifts

Alonso N. Gutiérrez, Ph.D., a medical physicist and professor of radiation oncology at the CTRC at the UT Health Science Center, prepares a patient for treatment with the Novalis Tx™.

Karen Lee Zachry and Tom Ransdell, co-chairs of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) Cabinet, recently announced that gifts to the CTRC Cabinet in 2010 will benefit the CTRC radiation oncology clinic, home to Novalis Tx™, one of the CTRC’s newest and most advanced weapons in the war against cancer. The CTRC is the first and only facility in San Antonio to offer patients treatment with Novalis Tx.

A versatile tool, Novalis Tx delivers highly customized image-guided radiation treatments with increased speed and accuracy. This advanced technology allows CTRC physicians to perform noninvasive radiosurgery, killing tumors and other lesions without an incision and often in only one treatment. In most cases, the procedure is not painful and does not require anesthesia. There is no scarring or disfigurement and little risk for infection.

“Our goal is to deliver the lowest dose of radiation possible to the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor, while maximizing it to the cancerous cells,” said medical physicist Nikos Papanikolaou, Ph.D., professor of radiation oncology at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio. “The Novalis Tx allows us this capability.”

For more information or to join the CTRC Cabinet, please call Sheri Ortiz, CTRC director of development, at (210) 450-5512 or send an e-mail to ortizs8@uthscsa.edu. To make a gift to the Cabinet online, visit cancer.uthscsa.edu.