New radiobiology beamline to advance proton therapy in cancer treatment

NUS physicists in collaboration with clinicians from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) are developing a new beamline to advance proton therapy in cancer treatment.

Radiotherapy is a technique that is now used widely for the treatment of cancer. Conventional radiation therapy utilises energetic photons (e.g. x-rays) to target cancerous tumours in the body. As the photon beam intensity decreases exponentially when it penetrates through biological matter, the positioning and dosage of the beam need to be very precisely controlled to minimise damage to healthy tissues. Protons interact with matter differently. Most of the energy dissipation from the protons happen in the vicinity where the particle stops. The velocity of the initial beam of protons can therefore be adjusted such that they slow down, upon passing through tissue, and stop at different depths within the body. This means that protons can be directed to "damage" the tumour while leaving surrounding healthy tissues relatively unaffected.

Prof Andrew BETTIOL from the Department of Physics, NUS is constructing a new beamline at the accelerator facility in the Centre for Ion Beam Applications (CIBA) located at NUS. This beamline is part of a research programme which brings together scientists from NUS and clinicians from NCCS to study the fundamental effects of proton irradiation on various types of cancerous and non-cancerous cells for cancer treatment.

Prof Bettiol said, "When it is ready, this new radiobiology beamline will have the unique capability to target sub-cellular structures in live cells with energetic protons. The beamline has a confocal microscope that provides the user with real-time visualisation of the cellular response to a controlled irradiation dose. The proton beams can be focused to as small as 300 nm in diameter. This is 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Such a small beam size allows us to target sub-cellular structure with a precise amount of radiation."

The beamline is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2018.

Provided by National University of Singapore