Magnets Show Potential to Zap Cancerous Tumors in a Flash

While radiation treatments designed to kill cancer cells have come a long way, scientists and doctors are always exploring new ways to zap tumors more effectively. Recent tests at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory show that a small array of magnets designed as an offshoot of the Lab’s nuclear physics research could quite literally provide a path for such future cancer treatments.

The tests revealed that an arc of meticulously designed permanent magnets can transport beams of cancer-killing protons over a broad range of energies, from 50 to 250 million electron volts (MeV). “That’s the highest energy ever for this sort of beamline,” said Brookhaven Lab physicist Stephen Brooks, designer of the fixed-field magnets, and it’s an energy range that could enable more effective cancer treatment.

Specifically, the project is a step toward a possible future accelerator built using this technology, where physicians could rapidly switch among beam energies to deliver very fast lethal proton doses throughout a tumor’s depth.

“It’s really like a flash, essentially an ultra-high dose-rate beam,” said Samuel Ryu, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Stony Brook Medicine, who partnered with the Brookhaven team on this project. According to Ryu, “adjacent normal tissues appear to be better preserved” when radiation is delivered in very high doses very quickly, known as FLASH treatment. Building an accelerator that can achieve such “flash” doses with protons would give researchers a way to test the technology — and build on the advantages protons already offer for treating certain kinds of tumors.

“This work highlights important advances in accelerator science and technology gained through years of building accelerators for fundamental physics research — and how that research, conducted at the DOE national laboratories and universities using taxpayer dollars, can directly benefit society,” said Brookhaven Lab Associate Laboratory Director for Nuclear and Particle Physics Abhay Deshpande, who is also a professor of physics at Stony Brook University.

While the team is eager to build a full-scale facility, there are still many steps needed to test the potential of variable-energy FLASH proton treatment.

“An immediate goal is to do some cell culture research,” said SBU’s Ryu. “As a researcher and clinical investigator and a physician, I want to move this technology into patient care, hopefully in my time.”

This project was funded by Brookhaven Lab’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program and seed funding from Stony Brook University.

Read the full story at the Brookhaven National Laboratory website.