Clinical translation of FLASH radiotherapy

Preclinical research has shown that if radiation therapy is delivered at an ultra-high dose rate during a fraction of a
second, so-called FLASH radiotherapy, it may cause substantially less damage to healthy tissue, compared to
conventional radiotherapy, while still achieving an effective antitumor treatment. In theory, this could mean that cancer
patients would get less treatment side effects.
This project aims to translate these promising preclinical results into clinical trials with FLASH radiotherapy. Patients participating in the project will be treated with either FLASH or
conventional radiotherapy, and the results will be compared. Our hope is that this research will contribute to establish
evidence for FLASH being milder than conventional radiotherapy also in clinical applications. We will also investigate
whether the reduced side effects can be explored to increase the treatment dose and thereby to improve the
treatment effect on the tumor. Finally, we will develop new technical procedures to plan and deliver FLASH
radiotherapy in a safe way in the clinic.
Altogether, this project will provide an important step towards the clinical
translation of FLASH radiotherapy. The planned studies are primarily focused on shallow targets, such as various
forms of skin cancer, consistent with the applicability of the available equipment. In the longer perspective, the results
are expected to be highly important for the development of FLASH radiotherapy also for deep-seated tumors.