Speaker
Description
The radiation biology research at the UMCG PARTREC accelerator facility was pivotal in providing pre-clinical evidence for introduction of proton therapy as a cancer treatment modality in the Netherlands. UMCG PARTREC (formerly known as KVI-CART) operates the unique superconducting cyclotron AGOR that provides customizable ion beams of all stable elements, that are employed for a wide range of mainly medically oriented experiments. These experiments included the topics related to spatial fractionation, examining the influence of adjacent low-dose fields on tolerance to high doses of protons in rat cervical spinal cords. A major upgrade of a beamline for high precision radiation biology irradiations is under construction, to become available to the scientific community by the end of 2024. This infrastructure will permit customized sub-millimetric highly conformal pre-clinical proton, ion and photon beam irradiations with individualized irradiation planning. Such ultra-high dose delivery precision can be utilized to deliver scanned or scattered minibeams to cell lines, spheroids, organoids, tissue slices, mice, rats and other pre-clinical models. These minibeams can be precisely controlled and modified in order to examine the exact parameters influencing the irradiation outcomes. In addition, an extensive experimental and simulational FLASH program for proton and helium ion beams is ongoing, focusing a.o. on the comparison and minimization of the beam penumbra due to multiple scattering. The newly implemented Twin Beam capability of precisely replicating the parameters of the clinical beams can be used in conjunction with the short lived isotope PET reconstruction and proton radiography for dose delivery verification.