Designing new radiotherapy technologies to treat cancer in low- and middle-income countries

The John Adams Institute is co-leading a new project that aims to design and develop new radiotherapy technologies to give more cancer patients in Sub-Saharan Africa access to treatment and to save lives.

The project, Innovative Technologies towards building Affordable and equitable global Radiotherapy capacity (ITAR), is supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and will contribute to the development of novel radiotherapy machines, specifically designed to meet the needs of African hospitals. The challenge brings together an international team of accelerator physicists and engineers, medical physicists, radiobiologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists, IT experts, and health system researchers.

The ITAR project is led by Lancaster University and Oxford University and will bring together partners from the Cockcroft Institute, STFC’s Accelerator Science and Technology Centre (ASTeC), John Adams Institute, Swansea University, King’s College London, ICEC and CERN.

Professor Manjit Dosanjh, from CERN and Oxford University, and member of the ICEC Board of Directors, and who leads the overall international project, said,

I am really excited that the idea, first presented by Dr Norman Coleman of the International Cancer Expert Corps at the 2014 ICTR-PHE meeting held in Geneva, continues to flourish. Having Lancaster and Oxford Universities, along with Daresbury Laboratory and others working on this with STFC’s critical support and ICEC’s expertise, is a significant step in addressing the need for a novel medical linear particle accelerator to generate the radiation for LMICs and other challenging environments.

The full article can be found on the University of Oxford Physics Department homepage.