FLASH radiotherapy's bold approach to cancer treatment

tiderpenger

I generally don't trust cancer-communication if it's juiced up like this incredible headline. There has been huge amounts of progress. We don't need silicon valley idiots starting to make proclamations. It's doing fine without your mediocrity.

bitwize

Sounds a little too close, in both name and concept, to Therac for my comfort.

Eduard

Theryq - why would they go with this name when everyone in the field knows about the Therac-25 radiation overexposure incidents?

scythe

Hey, FLASH finally hit Hacker News! I remember my professors talking about this in graduate school. It's a fairly well-established effect: the tumor selectivity of radiation is much better at ultra-high dose rates. It is still unclear exactly why. But there are a lot of studies about it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-022-00697-z

slibhb

> Currently, the most plausible theory emerging from her team’s research points to metabolism: Healthy and cancerous cells may process reactive oxygen species—unstable oxygen-containing molecules generated during radiation—in very different ways. Reminds me of this which I (think) was linked here a while ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/s12276-020-0384-2 It really does feel like all these piecemeal cancer treatments are converging on something resembling a cure.

amelius

What is the intensity at the focal point versus areas surrounding it?

mv4

Does this have to do with cell division?

owenthejumper

The major issue isn't the speed of delivery, and the cancer. The key question is how do you spare normal tissue, and how do you prove the normal tissue is spared in the long term. Current answer is: You break it apart into multiple sessions, the anti-thesis of FLASH. Source: my wife is a radiation oncologist.

MeteorMarc

Hopefully, this will turn out better than proton therapy, which held similar promises of improvement. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11506991/

mbil

The PubPeer discussion of the original paper is kind of interesting https://pubpeer.com/publications/A32D7989007655CBF8D9DB2A250...