Award supports development of proton therapy

A team of researchers led by the University of Lincoln has received a £1.6 million Welcome Trust Translation Award to develop the use of proton therapy which has the ability to deliver high doses of radiation directly to a tumour,

This targeted approach will reduce radiation absorption by surrounding healthy tissue, thus is particularly useful in treating cancer in children and for tumours that are close to the body's vital structures.

The new three-year Pravda project is also investigating the use of unique imaging sensors developed at the University of Lincoln in conjunction with detectors developed by the University of Liverpool and used in Large Hadron Collider experiments.

This will provide better measurements of therapy dose, with the help of 3D images to pinpoint where the radiation is absorbed at the tumour site. The shorter dosage times might make it possible to treat some common cancers that so far have resisted treatment with conventional therapy.

Nigel Allinson, Distinguished Professor of Image Engineering at the University of Lincoln, explained: "Radiotherapy is a fundamental weapon in the battle against cancer with some 50 per cent of patients receiving it as part of their treatment.
"Proton therapy is widely used in the USA, and with two new government-supported centres becoming available in the UK, our work is not only timely but, hopefully, will have a major effect on the quality of life for many thousands of cancer patients. Being able to image exactly how the radiation interacts with a tumour, in 3D, is considered the holy grail of radiotherapy."

Professor Allinson has assembled a team of instrumentation scientists, medical physicists and oncologists from across the world, including people from the Universities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Surrey, the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, and the iThemba Laboratories (Cape Town, South Africa).