Dose-controlled irradiation of cancer cells with laser-accelerated proton pulses

Abstract

Proton beams are a promising tool for the improvement of radiotherapy of cancer, and compact laserdriven proton radiation (LDPR) is discussed as an alternative to established large-scale technology facilitating wider clinical use. Yet, clinical use of LDPR requires substantial development in reliable beam generation and transport, but also in dosimetric protocols as well as validation in radiobiological studies. Here, we present the first dose-controlled direct comparison of the radiobiological effectiveness of intense proton pulses from a laser-driven accelerator with conventionally generated continuous proton beams, demonstrating a first milestone in translational research. Controlled dose delivery, precisely online and offline monitored for each out of *4,000 pulses, resulted in an unprecedented relative dose uncertainty of below 10 %, using approaches scalable to the next translational step toward radiotherapy application.

High efficiency proton beam generation through target thickness control in femtosecond laser-plasma interactions

“…And while the peak proton energy is reduced in this optimised case, the energy range below 15 MeV is highly relevant for current investigations into warm dense matter 22 or biological damage studies. 23,24 In order to better understand the regime of TNSA with the laser and target parameters being considered here, the 1D radiation-hydrodynamic code HELIOS 25 was first used to model the possible disruptive effects of ASE on the thinnest target foils. An ASE intensity of 10 11 W cm…”

A compact solution for ion beam therapy with laser accelerated protons

“…One common critique of L-IBT is the lack of dose control compared to standard accelerators. Recently, an unprecedented relative dose uncertainty of below 10 % has been achieved during cell-irradiation experiments with laser-driven protons [26], which was previously reported as 28 % [28], which demonstrates the potential of high intensity lasers to control shot-to-shot fluctuations. Our gantry concept allows fixing the energy window of filtered bunches through ISESS; thus, shot-toshot fluctuations may only influence the flux delivered while the spectral width for each bunch could be kept almost constant.…”

“…Instead, it would be desirable to have the maximum proton cutoff energy at *300 MeV. Online dose control per bunch is essential to monitor the shot-to-shot dose fluctuations and has been successfully used in experiments with LAP [23,25,26,28]. Laser-driven IBT requires additional space for monitoring and control equipment, as does a con-IBT facility.…”

“…Therefore, L-IBT poses a whole new set of challenges on both physical and biological levels. Laser-driven irradiation technology with all the necessary main components (such as high power laser system and laser target to produce the particle beam, and also beam transport and monitoring as well as dose delivery technique) has already been developed to perform in-vitro cell [26][27][28][29][30][31][32] and small animal [24,26] irradiation with low energy LAP within radiobiological experiments. These recent promising results encourage a go-ahead with further L-IBT solutions.…”

“…Therefore, new methods and techniques for beam transport, irradiation field formation and treatment planning [19][20][21], along with beam-monitoring, dosimetry and dose-controlled irradiation [22][23][24][25][26] are required. Moreover, determination of radio-biological effects induced by ultrashort intense particle bunches [26][27][28][29][30][31][32] is necessary. In addition to laser particle accelerator development, a parallel oncologyfocused research and development is essential to bring this highly promising technology to the clinics.…”