Our new paper about radiotherapy and surgery sequencing is out

Early-stage cancers are routinely treated with surgery followed by radiotherapy (SR). Radiotherapy before surgery (RS) has been widely ignored for some cancers. We evaluate overall survival (OS) and disease- free survival (DFS) with SR and RS for different cancer types and simulate the plausibility of RS- and SR-induced antitumor immunity contributing to outcomes.

Our study results suggest plausibility that radiation to the bulk of the tumor could induce a more robust immune response and better harness the synergy of radiotherapy and antitumor immunity than postsurgical radiation to the tumor bed. This exploratory study provides motivation for prospective evaluation of immune activation of RS versus SR in controlled clinical studies.