Zac Labby

Graduate Student

Entered program: 2007

Hometown: Shawano, WI

Email: zelabby[at]uchicago.edu

Advisor: Bulent Aydogan, Ph.D.

I have a B.S. in Applied Math, Engineering and Physics (AMEP) from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, earned in 2007. I entered the program after a summer as a bike mechanic in Santa Fe, NM, and I now study response evaluation models for patients with mesothelioma.

For patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma, the system for response assessment is conceptually ill-founded and incomplete. The modified RECIST (Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors) system is used as a clinical surrogate for survival for these patients, but the foundations of the RECIST system can be interpreted as incompatible with the properties of mesothelioma. At the very least, the application of RECIST to mesothelioma needs to account for disease-specific survival and growth kinetics. Furthermore, clinically relevant information beyond tumor size characteristics should play a role in any assessment system.

To that end, I aim to expand tumor size measurements from the current one-dimensional measurements to the full 3D information available from radiographic imaging. I will analyze relationships between tumor burden and survival in order to assess the performance of current response assessment techniques. Perhaps more importantly, I hope to build and validate a model for patient survival which incorporates both radiographic tumor burden and clinically relevant covariates, all of which have the potential to vary over time. Updated information during a patient's therapy may give researchers stronger predictive information, and thereby a more effective surrogate system. The end goal is to provide clinicians with a system that allows for accurate response assessment, which can be used to assess the efficacy of novel cancer therapies.