The excitement of unwrapping gifts on Christmas Day was overshadowed for Trey Bowman and his family in 2010, after realizing there was something wrong with their 7-year-old daughter, Bella.
After rushing to the emergency room where doctors ran tests, Bella was diagnosed with an ependymoma brain tumor on New Year’s Day.
The doctors immediately removed the tumor, and the Bowmans travelled to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, to begin Bella’s radiation therapy.
“Children with this type of cancer usually receive this course of treatment — radiation after the surgery,” Trey said. “So we went to St. Jude’s and ultimately to Jacksonville, Florida, where Bella received proton radiation. She did quite well through the treatment, and even shortly after the treatment, everything was great.”
Bella and her family returned to their Baton Rouge home in summer 2011.
For the first few months, Bella stayed healthy, but an unexpected side effect took her back St. Jude’s.
“[The doctors] found tissue necrosis inside her brain stem, which is inoperable,” Trey said. “Basically the radiation was working, but it was working too well. It was killing the healthy tissue that it shouldn’t have been.”
After 60 rounds of hyperbaric oxygen treatment — intended to stop and hopefully revert the necrosis — as well as two chemotherapy treatments, the Bowmans decided to drive home for the holidays on Dec. 15, 2011.
Bella showed symptoms during the drive back to Baton Rouge and was taken to Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital. She died on Dec. 23, 2011 at the age of 8.
From the moment Bella was diagnosed, Trey said he and his wife, Kim, were inspired by the support they saw from members of their community. A few weeks after Bella died, they decided to turn that inspiration into action by starting the Bella Bowman Foundation.
The foundation’s commitment to research led to a collaboration with Wayne Newhauser, University medical physics professor and director of medical physics and health physics, who, in partnership with the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, was given a $75,000 research grant to look at the risks of radiation therapy for cancer patients in fall 2014.
“This is actually the second grant the Bella Bowman Foundation has awarded to us. The first was a seed grant to commence preliminary research on the several possible causes of radiation necrosis in 2012,” Newhauser said. “That study, which was completed last year, yielded results that helped set the direction of the current study, which will continue through 2017.”
Newhauser enlisted University medical physics Ph.D students Christopher Schneider, Lydia Wilson and William Donahue, as well as physics graduate student Andrew Halloran, to contribute to the research with projects for their degrees.
“We’re simultaneously pushing the frontier of knowledge in several different areas. We have very bright young minds who are making a difference through the research they perform as part of their graduate training,” Newhauser said. “It’s our long-term goal to find ways to prevent radiation necrosis from taking another life.”
Schneider works on testing, developing and refining the radiation dose calculation algorithms — looking at how much radiation treatment is administered by the machine — in both X-ray radiation therapy and proton radiation therapy.
Halloran is applying 3-D printing technology to the research by printing what Newhauser calls “plastic phantom” replicas of patients. These phantoms posses the exact same anatomical structure as a patient’s disease, so Halloran can test different radiation treatment measurements without harming the actual patient.
Wilson, who collaborated by testing X-ray radiation treatment algorithms as a graduate student, and Donahue, who created a prototype database for necrosis cases as a graduate student, recently began their Ph.D programs and are in the process of developing projects for their doctorates on the topic.
“Working with this group of people who all have projects that will come together to eventually make one solution for predicting, preventing or managing [radiation] necrosis is a great place for us to start a career,” Donahue said. “The fact this affected someone who directly reached out to Dr. Newhauser and asked him to do this research is actually one of the reasons I decided to work with him, because this research is an area of interest for me and my future and it’s an area of growing interest nationwide.”
Trey credits Bella with steering him in the right direction when looking for prospective scientists.
“I thought I was going to have to go to New York, Los Angeles or the West Coast to find this team or person that would be willing to take on this research and have the experience to be able to take on this research and as it turns out, he’s one exit down from my house.” Trey said. “We’re very fortunate to have found Wayne Newhauser.”
The Bella Bowman Foundation works to fund research on pediatric radiation treatment, to educate medical staffs on the different types of pediatric brain cancer and to provide comfort care for families in need.
The foundation will be hosting the fourth annual “Bella’s Ball” at the L’Auberge Casino and Hotel Baton Rouge at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $75 at the door.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Emily Brauner

LSU Professor of Medical physics and Director of medical and health physics Wayne Newhauser and his team of medical physics students Will Donahue, Lydia Wilson, Andrew Halloran and Christopher Schneider (from left to right) are researching the side effects of postoperative radiation treatments for pediatric cancer patients on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 in Nicholson Hall.