Faster and Safer? The Quick Rise of FLASH Radiotherapy

Destroying a tumour in a fraction of second without any toxicity has always been considered the ultimate goal of radiation oncology. Ultra-high dose rate (>40 Gy/s; FLASH) radiotherapy has recently emerged as a new modality of irradiation, able to maintain tumour control while reducing normal tissue toxicity. Ultra-fast treatments could reduce toxicity and enable dose escalation to enhance anti-tumor efficacy. They also would improve patients’ comfort, reduce the treatment time and organ-motion related issues, eventually increasing the number of patients that can be treated in a clinic. However, there are several hurdles for translation into the clinic, including understanding of the mechanism, optimization of the parameters, and technological hitches. At GSI we have demonstrated that the FLASH conditions can be achieved with heavy ions at a synchrotron. The results obtained at GSI on carbon ion-FLASH and the perspectives will be discussed in the seminar.

FAIR-GSI PhD Award 2022

Talk by award recipient:

Johannes Hornung (GSI & HI Jena)

"Study of Preplasma Properties Using Time-Resolved Reflection Spectroscopy"