For more than 25 years, Jeffrey Y.C. Wong, M.D., guided City of Hope’s Department of Radiation Oncology through unprecedented growth. The program now boasts the latest technologies, including image-guided/ intensity modulated radiation therapy, image-guided radiation therapy, TomoTherapy, CT simulation, functional tumor imaging, radioimmunotherapy and advanced brachytherapy technologies.

His primary areas of research include the development of novel strategies and agents for image-guided and biologically targeted radiation therapy for patients with locoregional and systemic disease.

Dr. Wong’s team pioneered and developed the use of a targeted form of bone marrow irradiation, treating the first case in 2005, in a collaborative effort between the Department of Radiation Oncology and the bone marrow transplant program. Since 2002, he has helped lead a team to develop and clinically evaluate a new method of delivering a more targeted form of total body irradiation (TBI) that uses large field image-guided/intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in patients undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantations for a variety of advanced hematologic malignancies. His team was the first in the world to use this method, total marrow irradiation (TMI) or total marrow and lymphoid irradiation (TMLI), on patients. This approach provides the treating oncologist much more control of dose delivery to target areas and dose avoidance of normal organs.

He has been involved with the development and implementation of TMLI protocols at City of Hope, and has also helped to lead the effort to use TomoTherapy and VMAT to deliver TBI. A TMI database has been developed to capture data for patients receiving IMRT-based TBI, TMI and TMLI worldwide. His team has collaborated with centers in Asia and Europe to initiate TMI and TMLI programs.

As co-director of the Center for Theranostic Studies, Dr. Wong works on the development and use of targeted radiopharmaceuticals for therapy, imaging and image-guided radiotherapy, focusing on the development and clinical evaluation of radiolabeled antibodies for the last 25 years. He helps lead a team that brings new agents developed in City of Hope labs to the clinic. He has been the principal investigator of over 20, and co-principal investigator on an additional three, radioimmunotherapy clinical trials. These agents have been used to treat patients with colorectal cancers, other gastrointestinal cancers and cancers of the breast, thyroid and lung.