Conditions: Uterine Cervical Neoplasms Endometrial Neoplasms Anus Neoplasms Rectal Neoplasms Prostatic Neoplasms
Keywords: radiotherapy Positron-Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography chemotherapy bone marrow
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 36
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
\[F-18\] Fluorothymidine PET imaging will be used to create a radiation therapy treatment plan to avoid active bone marrow in the pelvis. This will be done to evaluate if sparing bone marrow will help maintain blood counts. This would impact chemotherapy administration.

Detailed description:
Overall survival of pelvic cancer patients depends on control of systemic disease. If local radiation therapy depletes bone marrow function to such an extent that systemic therapies must be withheld, chances of metastatic failure increase significantly. This may be more significant for this group of patients because approximately one third of adult bone marrow is located in the pelvic region. Strategies to minimize toxicities would benefit a range of pelvic cancer patients including gynecologic, anal, rectal, and prostate. New chemoradiation combinations improve outcomes for these disease sites, but come at the cost of higher levels of toxicity. As many as 40% of cervical cancer patients miss at least one chemotherapy cycle due to hematologic toxicity and 36% of anal cancer patients experience grade 3 or 4 hematologic toxicity when undergoing chemoradiation therapy. A clinical trial of concurrent chemoradiation therapy for rectal cancer was terminated due to toxicity, including hematologic toxicities. Concurrent chemoradiation therapy shows promise for advanced stage prostate cancers, but it also increases grade 3 and 4 toxicities. To successfully limit hematologic toxicities for pelvic cancers, it is extremely advantageous to avoid irradiating the highly proliferative compartments of the pelvic bone marrow. However, the complex structure of the pelvis makes it difficult to assess the efficacy of radiation therapy (RT) planning strategies to avoid areas critical to hematopoiesis. Uptake of \[18F\]fluorothymidine imaged with positron emission tomography (FLT PET/CT) can be an accurate and sensitive tool for identifying and monitoring the effects of chemoradiation on proliferative pelvic bone marrow. Clinically validating the utility of FLT PET/CT imaging for identifying active bone marrow in the design of bone marrow sparing RT-plans and the important bone marrow assessment time points would provide a method to reduce acute and chronic hematologic toxicities for pelvic cancer patients.

Arms:
arm 1: Fluorothymidine F 18 (FLT) PET/CT imaging ordered pre-radiation therapy, during weeks 1 and 2 of radiation therapy, and then at 1 month and 12 months after radiation therapy. The FLT PET/CT imaging ordered pre-radiation therapy is used for bone marrow sparing IMRT radiation therapy.

Interventions: intervention 1: fluorothymidine F 18
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: A patient-specific bone marrow map will be designed from the pre-therapy FLT PET/CT imaging. A highly conformal radiation plan will be designed to spare active bone marrow.

Protocol document: