PhD position Image-guided treatment of brain malignancies with radioactive holmium microspheres (1.0 FTE)

An innovative minimally invasive image-guided treatment approach for brain tumors will be developed in a consortium of Veterinary, Medical, and Engineering Sciences. The project is funded by NWO. In this project the effectiveness of radioactive 166-holmium microspheres for image-guided intratumoral treatment will be evaluated by studying the intratumoral injection approach, clinical safety and efficacy in an experimental tumor model. Furthermore, the clinical efficacy will be investigated in a translational model for human patients: veterinary patients with brain tumors.

The candidate will be positioned at the Department of Clinical Sciences of Companion Animals, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, and will be part of a dynamic, multidisciplinary team. You will be involved in pre-clinical research which includes optimization of a needle injection approach, image-guided dosimetric monitoring of microsphere distribution in tissue and evaluation of feasibility/safety/efficacy in a tumor model (lab animal). You will also participate in the recruitment, clinical staging, treatment, and follow-up of clinical veterinary patients in the setting of the academic veterinary teaching hospital (University Veterinary Medical Center Utrecht). The candidate will be part of the Holmium Translational Research Group, which is coordinated by Dr. Frank Nijsen at the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine of the Radboudumc Nijmegen, where a parallel PhD project focuses on the medical engineering of a dedicated needle-administration device and imaging-based dosimetric monitoring system. It is our goal to translate the outcomes of these research projects into a new treatment option for human patients.