Charlems Alvarez Jimenez PhD, postdoctoral scholar at Case Western Reserve University in the Imaging Informatics for Interventions (INVent) Laboratory led by AID2B Center Co-director, Dr. Satish Viswanath, is a recipient of the 2024 PhRMA Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Award in Translational Medicine.
Over 40,000 patients are diagnosed with rectal cancer annually and receive neoadjuvant therapy to reduce tumor burden followed by surgical excision of the rectum. Although up to 27% achieve pathologic complete response on the post-surgical specimen, they are still subjected to an invasive surgical procedure that is associated with quality-of-life issues. Currently, there are no reliable or accurate clinically established markers indicative of treatment response in rectal cancer beyond histological findings on surgically excised rectal specimens.
Charlems’s research is focused on developing a novel radiopathomic signature which will integrate computational analysis of digitized biopsy images with quantitative characterization of corresponding MRI scans, toward capturing, integrating, and predicting treatment response in rectal cancers. This research and findings have potential to be clinically translated in the future to enable precision medicine in rectal cancers.