Iakovos Toumazis
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer, largely because most patients are diagnosed late. Screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT), a low-radiation CT scan, catches cancer earlier.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
lung cancer
low-dose computed tomography
pulmonary nodules
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Expand the ENGAGE lung cancer screening framework beyond age, sex and smoking history to include non-smoking risk factors such as race, family history and history of pulmonary disease.
- Build microsimulation models of how pulmonary nodules progress, as the basis for testing management strategies.
- Optimize patient-level diagnostic management of lung nodules with a partially observable Markov decision process that chooses among serial LDCT, biopsy, PET/CT or a blood-based biomarker.
- Compare the effectiveness, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the updated ENGAGE framework, with its integrated diagnostic module, against current screening practice.
More about the research
In 2021, eligibility for screening was expanded to younger and lighter smokers. Many newly eligible people, however, have low cancer risk and may gain little from screening. They still face its harms: false alarms, risky follow-up procedures, anxiety and cost. Scans also find many harmless lung nodules, which are hard to manage. Current guidelines ignore important risk factors, and existing risk models leave out life expectancy.
Why it matters
Lung cancer screening can save lives but also causes harm from false positives and invasive tests, especially in people at low risk. Personalized screening and nodule-management schedules based on each person's risk and life expectancy could help doctors screen the people most likely to benefit. They could also cut unnecessary procedures and inform more cost-effective screening guidelines.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Dominique Michaud
Tufts University, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Develop a pre-screening tool using blood leukocyte DNA methylation markers to sort high-risk NLST participants into finer risk categories and reduce the number of low-dose CT scans needed.
Jennifer Lund
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Estimate the real-world benefits and harms of low-dose CT lung cancer screening among people eligible for screening, using trial transport to adjust National Lung Screening Trial results to national survey populations.
Miguel Lejeune
George Washington University, DC·Engineering
Advance real options analysis for infrastructure protection investment under multiple sources of uncertainty, building on optimal stopping theory and the Black-Scholes model from finance.
The school
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: 23 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research.
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