2023-06-14 11:34:07
After establishing itself as one of the treatments of choice for complex tumors, the proton therapy continues to advance precision medicine. ORn multidisciplinary team of the Cancer Center Clínica Universidad de Navarra is developing a method that allows the quantification of the radiation dose deposited in the circulating blood during the treatment of a tumor and thus reduce its toxicity.
The first results have been presented today in an oral communication during the Proton Therapy World Congress (PTCOG 61) that is being held this week in Madrid with the collaboration of the Cancer Center Clinica Universidad de Navarra and Quirónsalud.
The study has 25 patients and shows that a personalized approach can be taken to specifically plan and administer the dose according to each patient. One of the main advantages of proton therapy over conventional radiotherapy is its ability to more precisely direct the radiation beam to the tumor, reducing adverse effects on adjacent healthy tissues.
With this method, it will be possible to further customize the treatment by studying the vascular structure that contains the patient’s circulating blood to adjust the dose and the direction of the beam.
“Other studies use larger tissues such as the kidney as the organ at risk. In this case, we have studied the vasculature because we have seen how the dose can affect the blood cells and induce unwanted effects, such as lymphopenia (alteration in which the blood does not have enough lymphocytes). Thus, the blood vessels around the tumor become one more parameter when establishing treatment with the objective of minimizing its toxicity,” he points out. Marina Garciaa biomedical engineer who is doing her thesis in the Physics and Applied Mathematics department of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Navarra.
To do this, parameters such as blood vessels, their contours or flow, and technical aspects such as the temporal structure of the beam delivery, the energy level or the start and end time of this field will be analyzed. “There are cases, depending on the location of the tumor, such as in the neck region, in which it is practically impossible to avoid main vessels. But there are others in which you can slightly deviate the beam and get that improvement”, adds the Dr. Javier BurgueteProfessor of Applied Physics at the Faculty of Sciences.
Application in clinical practice
The ultimate goal of this project is improve clinical practice in radiotherapy oncology through the development of algorithms that allow radiotherapy planners to incorporate circulating blood as a particularly decisive organ in the immunity of patients.
“Blood has been the great forgotten of human tissues to protect from radiation. The availability of protons and photons makes it possible to study how to protect the immunotherapy of patients through dosimetric planning”, commented the Dr. Felipe CalvoProfessor of Radiation Oncology, principal investigator of the project and scientific director of the Proton Therapy Unit of the Cancer Center Clínica Universidad de Navarra.
The investigation remains active and the next steps will be to study the clinical implications through blood tests (biomarkers) to establish the correlation of doses in the blood and how it has been damaged.
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