Ultra-Fast Cancer Treatments Could Replace Conventional Radiotherapy (bbc.com) 27
CERN's particle accelerator is being used in a pioneering cancer treatment called Flash radiotherapy. This method delivers ultra-high radiation doses in less than a second, minimizes side effects while targeting tumors more effectively than conventional radiotherapy. The BBC reports: In a series of vast underground caverns on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, experiments are taking place which may one day lead to new generation of radiotherapy machines. The hope is that these devices could make it possible to cure complex brain tumors (PDF), eliminate cancers that have metastasized to distant organs, and generally limit the toll which cancer treatment exerts on the human body. The home of these experiments is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern), best known to the world as the particle physics hub that developed the Large Hadron Collider, a 27 kilometer (16.7 mile)-long ring of superconducting magnets capable of accelerating particles to near the speed of light.
Arguably Cern's crowning achievement was the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called "God Particle" which gives other particles their mass and in doing so lays the foundation for everything that exists in the universe. But in recent years, the centre's unique expertise in accelerating high-energy particles has found a new niche -- the world of cancer radiotherapy. Eleven years ago, Marie-Catherine Vozenin, a radiobiologist now working at Geneva University Hospitals (Hug), and others published a paper outlining a paradigm-shifting approach to traditional radiotherapy treatment which they called Flash. By delivering radiation at ultra-high dose rates, with exposures of less than a second, they showed that it was possible to destroy tumors in rodents while sparing healthy tissue. Its impact was immediate. International experts described it as a seminal breakthrough, and it galvanized fellow radiobiologists around the world to conduct their own experiments using the Flash approach to treat a wide variety of tumors in rodents, household pets, and now humans.
In recent years, animal studies have repeatedly shown that Flash makes it possible to markedly increase the amount of radiation delivered to the body while minimizing the impact that it has on surrounding healthy tissue. In one experiment, healthy lab mice which were given two rounds of radiation via Flash did not develop the typical side effects which would be expected during the second round. In another study, animals treated with Flash for head and neck cancers experienced fewer side effects, such as reduced saliva production or difficulty swallowing. Loo is cautiously optimistic that going forwards, such benefits may also translate to human patients. "Flash produces less normal tissue injury than conventional irradiation, without compromising anti-tumor efficacy -- which could be game-changing," he says. An additional hope is that this could then reduce the risk of secondary cancers (PDF), resulting from radiation-induced damage later in life, although it is still too early to know if that will be the case. [...] But the next phase of research is not only about testing whether Flash works in people. It's also about identifying which kind of radiation is the best one to use.
Arguably Cern's crowning achievement was the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called "God Particle" which gives other particles their mass and in doing so lays the foundation for everything that exists in the universe. But in recent years, the centre's unique expertise in accelerating high-energy particles has found a new niche -- the world of cancer radiotherapy. Eleven years ago, Marie-Catherine Vozenin, a radiobiologist now working at Geneva University Hospitals (Hug), and others published a paper outlining a paradigm-shifting approach to traditional radiotherapy treatment which they called Flash. By delivering radiation at ultra-high dose rates, with exposures of less than a second, they showed that it was possible to destroy tumors in rodents while sparing healthy tissue. Its impact was immediate. International experts described it as a seminal breakthrough, and it galvanized fellow radiobiologists around the world to conduct their own experiments using the Flash approach to treat a wide variety of tumors in rodents, household pets, and now humans.
In recent years, animal studies have repeatedly shown that Flash makes it possible to markedly increase the amount of radiation delivered to the body while minimizing the impact that it has on surrounding healthy tissue. In one experiment, healthy lab mice which were given two rounds of radiation via Flash did not develop the typical side effects which would be expected during the second round. In another study, animals treated with Flash for head and neck cancers experienced fewer side effects, such as reduced saliva production or difficulty swallowing. Loo is cautiously optimistic that going forwards, such benefits may also translate to human patients. "Flash produces less normal tissue injury than conventional irradiation, without compromising anti-tumor efficacy -- which could be game-changing," he says. An additional hope is that this could then reduce the risk of secondary cancers (PDF), resulting from radiation-induced damage later in life, although it is still too early to know if that will be the case. [...] But the next phase of research is not only about testing whether Flash works in people. It's also about identifying which kind of radiation is the best one to use.
Lost a lot of family to cancer. (Score:3)
I've lost a lot of family to cancer. Fuck cancer.
I'm all for better development. Maybe this could have helped my father, his cancer was inoperable due to location, they couldn't use the radiation treatments of the time, maybe this could have been used?
The chemo they went with instead wrecked him.
What type of radiation to test killing Cancer Cell (Score:1)
Re:What type of radiation to test killing Cancer C (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also about identifying which kind of radiation is the best one to use.
It is protons. Quite obvious, of course, from the fact that it happens at CERN, but there is also a physical reason for this.
Because of the way heavy charged particles (protons and ions) lose energy when traveling through material, they tend to deposit almost all of their energy at roughly the same distance [wikipedia.org].
The beam properties can be selected so that most of the deposited energy happens at the location of the tumor, minimizing exposure of healthy tissue around it. This is unlike a beam of gammas, which loses energy exponentially and cannot be "focused" on a given area without damaging more the tissues that are in front of the tumor.
As for the flash, there are two main mechanisms kill cells exposed to radiation. One is direct breaking of bonds due to hits from the particles, the other is from radicals created from the water molecules in the cells, which can spread and oxidize surrounding tissue as well. I'd guess the "flash" effect has something to do with the amount of bond breakage and radical creation during exposure.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:What type of radiation to test killing Cancer C (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not a biologist, I'm more on the beam side of things so my knowledge is rather cursory, but the doses in radiotherapy are huge and are intended not to bring subtle damage, but to kill the tumor cells with acute radiation sickness outright.
IIRC, the typical total dose in a therapy course is 40-60 grays, which, if delivered indiscriminately, will kill the patient with certainty (IAEA give 8 Sv, or 8 grays from gammas as 100% lethal dose). The therapy basically just fries the tumor, causing disintegration of everything.
You can read about the kind of damage these doses create here https://archive.org/details/AS... [archive.org] (the truly horrible story of the death of someone who got a dose of about 20 Sv during a nuclear incident in Japan in 1999 and was kept alive for 83 days)
This is why people are quite sick after such therapies, and why everyone is looking for ways to limit the tissues that are exposed and lower the doses.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
There is, sadly, no focusing as such with high energy particles.
When a therapy is done with collimated gamma rays (essentially a lead box with radioactive source and a hole in one of the walls), the beam travels in a straight line and its intensity declines with the travel through the tissue exponentially (since you're nearly transparent to gammas above 1MeV, the exponent is small, so all tissue in the beam is getting exposure). You try to find the angle where the tumor will get the most exposure.
Protons an
Re: (Score:2)
And of course the charged particles beam shape is controlled with magnets.
Re: (Score:2)
Look into "CyberKnife" and other similar approaches to focusing radiation into a small target area.
Re: (Score:2)
>> It is protons
That's what I read too, but the BBC article states that someone wants to "develop a new form of accelerator" that delivers "very high energy electrons", which seems like an entirely different mechanism. And "currently in discussions with commercial partners to develop an X-ray Flash machine".
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if you have one accelerated particle, you can use it on a target to produce just about anything, and at CERN they can not only produce, but separate, point and measure beams very well. I'm sure they have proton and ion setups, although I haven't heard about therapy with electron beams. There is another accelerator, GSI in Darmstadt, Germany, where tumor treatments were developed even before experiments began at CERN, they also use heavy ions. Gamma rays have been the staple, because they are easy to p
Re: (Score:2)
From my reading of their paper it appears that the main objective is to deliver a large amount of energy in a small amount of time. Could be protons, electrons, or photons. Healthy cells have mechanisms that let them survive this with little damage but cancer cells don't.
Re: (Score:3)
It is protons. Quite obvious, of course, from the fact that it happens at CERN, but there is also a physical reason for this.
Because of the way heavy charged particles (protons and ions) lose energy when traveling through material, they tend to deposit almost all of their energy at roughly the same distance [wikipedia.org].
Proton therapy for cancer has been around for many years. There are several advantages of this therapy. First, leveraging the Bragg Peak effect to deposit proton energy precisely is possible by modeling the tumor and using a 3D "lens" that attenuates the proton beam in just the right way to focus only on the tumor. Second, protons can be generated with a "small" cyclotron. This means that there are many such facilities (46 [proton-therapy.org] in the US at many hospitals and universities).
As a side note, these proton therap
Re: (Score:2)
It's also about identifying which kind of radiation is the best one to use.
It is protons. Quite obvious, of course, from the fact that it happens at CERN, but there is also a physical reason for this.
Because of the way heavy charged particles (protons and ions) lose energy when traveling through material, they tend to deposit almost all of their energy at roughly the same distance [wikipedia.org].
If you can help it, a better choice is probably to not use particles at all. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) can be used to treat a lot of different kinds of cancer in a lot of places, though it won't work if the sound would have to pass through bone.
As long as it's not named Therac-25 (Score:2)
History [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
My dog had colon cancer about 4y ago. We tried this new treatment at the recommendation of our vet and our dog got 'cured' from cancer but all the cells in the area died in the following weeks. This was very painful for her at the end and the cure was worse than the original disease.
Cost of healthcare (Score:2)
Now every hospital is going to want its own Large Hadron Collider.
Marie-Catherine Vozenin (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
ultra-high dose rate (Score:2)
Reading through the paper, it sounds like the main novelty of this approach is the delivery of a very high dose of radiation in a short amount of time. It could be protons, electrons, or high-energy photons.
"ultrafast delivery of radiation at dose rates that are several orders of magnitude greater than those used in conventional radiotherapy"
As I understand it, conventional radiotherapy uses pulses of gamma rays (high energy photons) for a couple of minutes or longer. The gamma rays are derived from radioac
Re: ultra-high dose rate (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Same for me. Throat cancer, 35 sessions (plus 7 chemo sessions), cured. I ended up with a noticeable loss of saliva and taste, but I can't complaint at all. Medical protocols and technology really went a loooong way in the last 20 years or so. I hope this new approach gets good results soon.
Re: ultra-high dose rate (Score:2)
Cancer radiotherapy article (Score:2)