Moderator of 3 Sessions
The E-Poster viewing stations are located at the Exhibition Area of the venue.
Presenter of 2 Presentations
The Need for a Research Room in a Proton Therapy Centre
Unique Proton and Electron Flash Experiment Platform for Preclinical Studies
Abstract
Abstract Body
The recent rediscovery of the “Flash Effect” revived the interest in high and ultra-high dose-rate radiation effects throughout the radiobiology community, promising protection of normal tissue, while simultaneously not altering tumour control. Systematic preclinical studies at (modified) clinical accelerators resulted in a recipe of necessary beam parameters for the induction of electron Flash effect (doi:10.3389/fonc.2019.01563), whereas for protons the optimal parameter setting is still under investigation. Expanding the clinical parameter range the “Dresden platform for high-dose rate radiobiology” enables electron and proton experiments with dose-rates of up to 109 Gy/s and more flexible beam pulse structures.
Overview of the different accelerators available at the “Dresden platform for high-dose rate radiobiology”. For illustration, the time regime interesting for Flash and UHDR studies is marked.
For systematic studies of the available electron and proton beam parameters, the zebrafish embryo model was irradiated under similar conditions at the different accelerators. The irradiation setup was adapted with respect to model requirements, i.e. a certain partial oxygen pressure, and the respective beam parameters.
Making use of the flexible pulse structure of the research electron accelerator ELBE, the mean dose rate was identified as the factor that defines the electron Flash effect with decreasing radiation damage for electron mean dose rate from 0.1 to 105 Gy/s. To cover a similar range of dose rates for protons, irradiations at the University Proton Therapy Dresden (UPTD) were combined with proton treatment at the laser proton accelerator DRACO. In doing so, the effects of proton dose rates in the range of 0.1 to 109 Gy/s could be investigated.
To sum up, using the zebrafish embryo model as showcase the possibilities of the “Dresden platform” were demonstrated, which opens the possibility for systematic studies on the mechanisms of the Flash effect in tissue, on physico-chemical or molecular level.