No Evidence for a Different RBE between Pulsed and Continuous 20 MeV Protons

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

“…Both radiobiological results are in good agreement with a complementary experiment performed at the Munich Tandem Van-de-Graaf accelerator [37,38] and a recent study of the RBE of intense single pulses of LDPR, where the dose applied to the cells was varying across the probe and analyzed retrospectively for individual irradiated areas [26]. Making use of different pulse modes of the Tandem accelerator, the first study focused on the dependence of the RBE on the peak dose rate by comparing the effect of short-pulses (few nanoseconds) and continuous beams of 20 MeV protons, while the latter directly made use of the intrinsically high peak dose rates of LDPR of up to few Gy per pulse.…”

The Effectiveness of 20 MeV Protons at Nanosecond Pulse Lengths in Producing Chromosome Aberrations in Human-Hamster Hybrid Cells

“…With respect to these endpoints no indication for a significantly altered efficiency of pulsed protons compared to a continuous irradiation was observed (8)(9)(10)(11). Further biological experiments were performed using a human skin tissue model to account for the 3D geometry and the cell interaction, again without statistically significant changes in RBE according to dose rate (12).…”

Laser-driven beam lines for delivering intensity modulated radiation therapy with particle beams

“…At the moment such a simulation at high energies would be too speculative as the input parameters are not known. In the meantime, radiobiological experiments [27][28][29][30] will continue to complement these developments to evaluate the potential of laser-driven particle beams with respect to their biological effects. Overall, this concept is an interesting application of lasers in medicine which needs further investigation but may offer a unique tool for cancer therapy.…”