Growing up in a remote village in Uganda — with no running water or electricity — Minesh Mehta, M.D., couldn’t have foreseen a future where he would be named the most prolific and cited author over a lifetime in the field of brain metastasis by Highly Ranked Scholars^TM.

“I still remember having a rain tank to collect water and a mud stove in the kitchen,” said Dr. Mehta, who is deputy director, chief of radiation oncology and the John and Mary Lou Dasburg Endowed Chair in Radiation Oncology at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute.

Many years have passed in the journey from Uganda through higher education, medical school and the forefront of research to Miami Cancer Institute, yet Dr. Mehta still appreciates his simple past and is grounded by his early experiences.

“I don’t believe this is an Olympic race where you finish first, second or third in a measurable way,” he said of his publishing recognition. “I really look at my work as an evolution of ideas based on the work of many people and in collaboration with many others.”

For Dr. Mehta, research starts with a problem or a testable hypothesis. “I reverse engineer solutions,” he explained. “And while each of those publications may seem like an isolated work to someone who doesn’t know the end goal, they are really like the steps of a ladder. Each paper is a rung.”

Along the way, he has built both a formidable team at Miami Cancer Institute and a body of research that is resulting in better and more individualized care for brain metastasis patients, whose cancers are particularly challenging. One area of focus has been on improving traditional approaches to lower the rate of side effects; another is developing novel technologies and new uses for existing technologies.

The Highly Ranked Scholars accolade is a list of the “most productive (number of publications) authors whose works are of profound impact (citations) and of utmost quality (h-index)” in a lifetime.

Among Dr. Mehta’s early significant research contributions is work he led at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to help reduce cognitive toxicities from radiation on the hippocampus, which plays a key role in regulating emotions and creating and storing memories. Protecting the hippocampus is essential, and Dr. Mehta and his team began studies using reduced radiation doses for whole brain radiotherapy, as well as combining whole brain radiotherapy with medications that help preserve the functioning of the hippocampus.

More recently, he has focused on proton therapy. Prior to joining Miami Cancer Institute, Dr. Mehta helped launch and was medical director of the Maryland Proton Treatment Center in Baltimore. Under Dr. Mehta, Miami Cancer Institute became South Florida’s first proton therapy program and is the most experienced in the region. The Institute also was the first center in the U.S. to pair the latest-generation proton delivery platform with pencil beam scanning, which delivers more-precise treatments that improve outcomes and reduce side effects.

In addition to his work on brain metastasis, Dr. Mehta is also widely published on gliomas and meningiomas. His more recent publications and trials include:

• Results from METIS (EF-25), an international multicenter phase III randomized study evaluating the efficacy and safety of tumor treating fields (TTFields) therapy in NSCLC patients with brain metastases. Initial findings showed that the median time to intracranial progression with best supportive care was 11.3 months, while the median time to intracranial progression with best supportive care plus TTFields was 21.9 months. The work at the Institute has led to its approval as the first site in the U.S. to use the technology in metastatic lung cancer, based on results from a prior trial.
• A first-in-world brain metastasis trial with Miami Cancer Institute radiation oncologist Rupesh Kotecha, M.D., the ADORATION trial uses the medication Azeliragon in combination with stereotactic radiosurgery to fight metastatic brain cancer.
• Temporally modulated pulsed proton re-irradiation (TMPPR) for recurrent high-grade gliomas, studying pulses of re-irradiation to enhance the death of tumor cells and the DNA repair of normal tissues.

One of the most significant contributing factors to the success of Miami Cancer Institute’s research program is its people, according to Dr. Mehta. “There are many individuals who are academically and clinically highly productive,” he said. “At Baptist Health, we are fortunate to have internationally and nationally known experts who have come together collectively. We have a culture of clinical research here that involves developing clinical trials, testing our ideas in scientifically sound and safe ways and publishing our results openly to the world to help us all improve.”

Dr. Mehta is also appreciative of the technology available at Miami Cancer Institute. “In most places, at least for radiotherapy, you might have two or three technologies to choose from. Here, we don’t have to choose a certain technology just because we have it. We can, for each individual patient’s clinical situation, select and deploy the best technology.”