What’s new in Radiation Therapy?

Conventional RT has made great steps forward and is the expression of a mature and advanced technology. However, it is clear so far to the world of scientific research and clinical experimentation that the damage caused to healthy tissues during the radiation therapy is still an important challenge for conventional RT.

FLASH RT represents a complete archetypal shift rather than a development of an existing technology. The number of studies is constantly increasing leading to an accumulation of promising results.

FLASH RT is potentially one of the most promising technologies for tumor treatment, offering important perspectives for preclinical research. Meeting this challenge means being at the forefront in the contribution to the fight against cancer.

FLASH RT: A BRIEF HISTORY

FLASH radiation therapy started out life in the “Mid”1970’s, with the first invitro experiment investigating oxygen depletion in cells irradiated at very high dose rates. Forty years on, in 2014, a report revealed the differential response to high dose rates between normal and tumor tissues in mice[1]. Thanks to this study, a new wave of scientific interest for a topic that was named FLASH radiation therapy started, increasing the data that became available within scientific literature, with a growing number of studies demonstrating the advantages of FLASH over conventional radiation therapy [2-3-4-5].

ElectronFlash is the first experimental platform dedicated to electron FLASH RT. It is designed to speed up the research and the development of tools and protocols to improve the adoption and diffusion of clinical applications.

• 1. Ultrahigh dose-rate FLASH irradiation increases the differential response between normal and tumor tissue in mice, V. Favaudon et al., Sci Transl Med; 6(245):245ra93, 2014.

• 2. Irradiation in a flash: Unique sparing of memory in mice after whole brain irradiation with dose rates above 100 Gy/s, P. Montay-Gruel et al., Radiother Oncol;124(3):365-369, 2017.

• 3. The Advantage of FLASH Radiotherapy Confirmed in Mini-pig and Cat-cancer Patients, Vozenin MC et al., Clin Cancer Res;25(1):35-42, 2019.

• 4. Clinical translation of FLASH radiotherapy: Why and how?, J. Bourhis et al., Radiother Oncol;139:11–17, 2019.

• 5. Treatment of a first patient with FLASH-radiotherapy, J. Bourhis et al., Radiother Oncol;139:18–22, 2019.