x-ray microbeam radiation therapy (MRT) as an innovative lung cancer treatment

• Applicant: Dr. Marina Santiago Franco, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Radiology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 492331627

Lung cancer is the most diagnosed cancer worldwide. In the past years, only a discreet change in its treatment outcome was observed while its incidence and mortality keep on increasing, highlighting the need for new treatment strategies. Radiotherapy (RT) plays an important role in the treatment of lung cancer, however its use is so far accompanied of severe radiation induced early and late side effects such as pneumonitis and lung fibrosis. These are dose-limiting toxicities that affects patients’ breathing and quality of life and therefore compromise the tumor control probability.Therefore , further improvements in RT planning and delivery techniques are urgently required. Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) is one of these innovative and radical new strategies, which has received growing interest in the last years. In MRT, instead of being treated homogeneously, a defined area receives the radiation field into micrometer sized high and low dose areas provided by a collimator. It has been demonstrated in preclinical studies that the distinct dose deposition of MRT leads to an impressively high tumor control and a drastic reduction of normal tissue toxicity.However, no data exist so far regarding the long-term tolerance of normal lung tissue and the treatment of lung tumors using MRT. In the present highly interdisciplinary project, MRT will be investigated as a promising strategy to avoid short- and long-term lung toxicities and as a potential curative strategy for lung tumors. The use of a small scale MRT source designed by our group will enable the fast preclinical evaluation of this novel therapy with a high potential of clinical translation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Stefan Bartzsch; Professor Dr. Thomas Schmid