Expanding the reach of medical physics: Immunotherapy should be included as part of the curriculum for medical physics education and training

摘要

From the classical radiobiology course in a medical physics graduateprogram, we learned the most important principle in terms of cellbehavior under different radiotherapy dose‐fractionation schemes:repair, reassortment, reoxygenation, and repopulation (a.k.a. “4 Rs”).The recent breakthrough in combining stereotactic body radiotherapy(SBRT) as an induction regimen for immunotherapy might suggesta “Fifth R”: radiosensitivity.1 So how important is it for medicalphysicists to have the fundamental knowledge of this new concept?Or perhaps a more relevant question is how impactful is this conceptto the field of radiation oncology? One of our previous parallelopposed editorials discussed whether the immunotherapy dictatesthe future of SBRT.2 In the current issue, the discussion continueson the importance of this new emergent field to our medical physicsprofession. Herein, we have Dr. Narottam Lamichhane arguing forthe proposition “Immunotherapy should be included as part of thecurriculum” of Medical physics education and training, and Dr. MatthewStudenski arguing against.