Ion Beam Applications S.A. and PARTICLE (Particle Therapy Interuniversity Center Leuven), located on the health sciences campus of the University Hospitals Leuven (UZ Leuven), announced they have initiated a Research Partnership for the development of ConformalFLASH. As part of the collaboration, IBA will enable the FLASH configuration in the clinical proton therapy system of PARTICLE to facilitate preclinical research on FLASH therapy. Researchers from UZ Leuven, KU Leuven and UCLouvain will perform preclinical experiments to evaluate the FLASH effect on normal tissue toxicity using IBA's Proteus®?ONE.

In the future, this could lead to new clinical functionality for patients. This is the first FLASH research project to be carried out with a superconducting synchrocyclotron, such as IBA's Proteus™?ONE in a clinical setting. FLASH therapy aims to deliver treatment at an ultra-high dose rate (> 40 Gy/s) in one to five fractions.

This is compared to conventional beam treatments that are delivered at much lower dose rate and typically spread out over an average of 25 to 30 sessions. This delivery at ultra-high dose rate might lead to a reduced toxicity and sparing effect on the normal tissues while offering similar tumor control to conventional treatment3. FLASH therapy can potentially deliver a paradigm shift in radiation therapy and cancer treatment, as demonstrated by a growing body of preclinical evidence4-5. The collaboration between IBA and PARTICLE is another successful step in bringing FLASH therapy to patients in the clinic.

It builds on the long-standing cooperation between the two partners, initiated in 2017.