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America's Newest Tool Against Cancer: Ion Therapy
There is a new alternative to surgery for cancer, and it is
said it is the next horizon in cancer care. Our country’s first carbon ion therapy
center to treat cancer is being built in collaboration with Hitachi on the campus of
the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. The
cancer therapy treatment will be part of Mayo’s new $233 million oncology facility.
An alternative to surgery, this new treatment has the capability of killing cancer
cells that
are resistant to traditional radiation therapy. Yet the US has been slow to adopt
the
treatment even though the technology was developed in California in 1975. According
to
experts, carbon ion therapy damages the DNA of fast-growing cancer cells, ultimately
destroying them. But unlike older forms of radiation, this technique causes minimal
harm to normal tissue. Studies also suggest it triggers an immune response against
cancer.
The plan is to put together a national Scientific Advisory Board composed of doctors
and
scientists from the US and abroad to study the efficacy and safety of the treatment
and
secure FDA approval so the treatment can be offered in 2025. It should also be noted
that
Mayo Clinic radiation oncologists and physicists have been studying carbon ion
treatment
in Asia and Europe for nearly a decade. Mayo already has developed a high level of
expertise in treatment planning and delivery. Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville oncology
center will
also include proton beam therapy for cancer patients so it can offer the full
spectrum of
treatment options.
America has lagged because it has been difficult to obtain federal funds or
sufficient
private backing to develop such facilities. The lack of scientific research and
scientific
efficacy has also been a factor. What has flourished instead is a related approach
called proton therapy, which also uses charged particles and has some of the same
benefits. Today 31 US proton centers offer treatment for cancers in areas where
radiation damage to surrounding normal tissue could be dangerous or even deadly,
such as tumors at the base of the skull or tumors in young children.
Carbon ion therapy is similarly precise, but because carbon ions are heavier and 12
times the size, they deliver more cancer-killing power than protons do many experts
say. Carbon centers have reported impressive survival rates, particularly for hard
to
treat bone and soft-tissue cancers such as spinal tumors.
The therapy involves accelerating carbon ions to near the speed of light, then
“painting” a tumor with the radiation beam. Accelerated particles deliver their
energy in a sort of delayed burst called a Bragg peak, so that very little damage
occurs
to normal tissue as the beam enters the body in a thin stream at a high velocity,
and
the killing power is concentrated on the tumor, where the particle track stops.
(Traditional radiation damages tissue as the beam enters and exits the body,
although radiologists use
techniques to minimize the damage.) Clearly, the interest in the field is gearing up
in the
US, The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York has collaborated with the
Shanghai
Proton and Heavy Ion Center in China to conduct a Phase 1 trial of carbon ion
therapy to treat
pancreatic cancer.
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