Massachusetts General Hospital

The mission of the Division of Biostatistics & Biomathematics is to provide biostatistical leadership, collaboration, consultation and quantitative research resources to clinical and laboratory scientists engaged in the planning, conduct, analysis, quality assurance and interpretation of research studies. The Division of Biostatistics & Biomathematics provides an essential component of the scientific basis for clinical research conducted in the Department of Radiation Oncology:

Services include:

• Designing study forms and case report forms;
• Assistance in writing protocols;
• Database programming and development;
• Randomizing patients;
• Monitoring the course of a trial, ensuring that the protocol is followed;
• Data entry;
• Quality assurance and auditing;
• Filing necessary forms to regulatory authorities;
• Providing data summaries to the PI and raw data files to the trial’s biostatistician.

Databases - The Division of Biostatistics & Biomathematics currently supports the following databases:

• Tumor proton registry
• Sarcoma
• Breast cancer
• Prostate cancer
• Lung cancer
• Small cell lung cancer
• Eye orbit cancer
• Protocol 99-278
• Meningioma
• Brain metastases from breast cancer
• Rectal cancer
• Chondrosarcoma
• Tracheal cancer

1. Hartford A., Niemierko A., Adams J., Urie M., Schipley W. Conformal irradiation of the prostate: estimating long-term rectal bleeding risk using dose-volume histograms. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 1996; 36(3):721-730.
2. Ancukiewicz M. An unsupervised an non-parametric classification procedure based on mixtures with known weights. Journal of Classification. 1998; 15:129-141.
3. Terahara A., Niemierko A., Goitein M., Finkelstein D., Hug E., Liebsch N., O'Farrell D., Lyons S., Munzenrider J. Analysis of the relationship between tumor dose inhomogeneity and local control in patients with skull base chordoma. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 1999; 45(2):351-358.
4. Lee CG, Heijn M, di Tomaso E, Griffon-Etienne G, Ancukiewicz M, Koike C, Park KR, Ferrara N, Jain RK, Suit HD, Boucher Y. Anti-Vascular endothelial growth factor treatment augments tumor radiation response under normoxic or hypoxic conditions. Cancer Research. 2000; 60:5565-70.
5. Taghian A.G., Assaad S.I., Niemierko A., Kuter I., Younger J., Schoenthalor R., Roche M., Powell S. Risk of radiation pneumonitis in patients with breast cancer treated by combination chemotherapy including paclitaxel with radiation therapy. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2001; 93: 1806-1811.
6. Chawla A., Taghian A.G., Powell S.N., Niemierko A., May J.W., Hamori C., Zapton D.T., Kachnic L.A. Radiation Therapy and Breast Reconstruction: Complications and Cosmesis with TRAM versus Tissue Expanders. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 2002, 54(2):520-526.
7. Choi N.C., Fischman A., Niemierko A., Ryu J.S., Lynch T., Wain J., Wright C., Fidias P., Mathisen D. Dose-response relationship between probability of pathologic tumor control and glucose metabolic rate measured with FDG PET after preoperative chemo-radiotherapy in advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 2002; 54(4):1024-1035.
8. Loeffler J.S., Niemierko A., Chapman P.H. Radiation-associated second tumors following radiosurgery: tip of an iceberg or bump on the road? Neurosurgery. 2003 Jun; 52(6):1436-42.
9. Weber DC, Chan AW, Bussiere MR, Harsh GR 4th, Ancukiewicz M, Barker FG 2nd, Thornton AT, Martuza RL, Nadol JB Jr, Chapman PH, Loeffler JS. Proton beam radiosurgery for vestibular schwannoma: tumor control and cranial nerve toxicity. Neurosurgery. 2003; 53:577-86; discussion 586-8.
10. Suit H, Goldberg S, Niemierko A, Trofimov A, Adams J, Paganetti H, Chen GT, Bortfeld T, Rosenthal S, Loeffler J, Delaney T. Proton beams to replace photon beams in radical dose treatments. Acta Oncol. 2003;42(8):800-8.
11. Ancukiewicz M, Finkelstein DM, Schoenfeld DA. Modeling the relationship between continuous covariates and clinical events using isotonic regression. Statistics in Medicine. 2003; 57:701-8.
12. Marucci L., Niemierko A., Liebsch N.J., Aboubaker F., Liu M.C.C., Munzenrider J.E. Spinal cord tolerance to high dose fractionated 3D conformal proton-photon irradiation as evaluated by Equivalent Uniform Dose and dose volume histogram analysis. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 2004; 59(2):551-555.
13. Lawenda B.D., Gagne H., Gierga D.P., Niemierko A., Wong W., Tarbell N.J., Chen D.T.Y., Loeffler J.S. Permanent alopecia after cranial irradiation: Dose-response relationship Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 2004; 60(3):879-887.

James and Ruth Clark Center for Radiation Oncology

Phone: 617-726-8650
Fax: 617-724-2019
Email: InformationRadOnc@Partners.org

Public Transportation Access: yes
Disabled Access: yes

James and Ruth Clark Center for Radiation Oncology
Cox Building, Lower Level
100 Blossom Street
Boston, MA 02114
Telephone: 617-726-8650
Fax: 617-724-2019
e-mail: InformationRadOnc@partners.org