Ultra-Fast Cancer Treatments Could Replace Conventional Radiotherapy

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.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.