18th Seminar of HITRIplus - Minibeam Radiation Therapy: From Concept to Clinical Application, Yolanda Prezado, Institut Curie and Michael Grams, Mayo Clinic

Monday Nov 11, 2024, 5:00 PM → 6:00 PM Europe/Zurich

ZOOM

Angelica Facoetti (CNAO Foundation), Manjit Dosanjh (University of Oxford (GB))

Global general scientific seminars linked to the HITRIplus project activities organised in the context of WP2 Networking, Communication, and Dissemination.

To apply for beamtime, please follow the instructions on this page: https://hitriplus.eu/transnational-access/ 

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About Yolanda Prezado:

Yolanda Prezado is a research professor at the Centre for Research in Molecular Medicina and Chronic Diseases (CiMUS), in Spain and a senior researcher at the Institut Curie (France).  She is  a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) (on leave) and head of the interdisciplinary team New Approaches in Radiotherapy (NARA). She has a multidisciplinary background. Her main research focus is spatially fractionated radiation therapy and proton therapy. One of their main projects is proton minibeam radiation therapy, funded by the European Union via an ERC consolidator grant. She has been the chair of the European Federation of Medical Physicists scientific committee from 2019 to 2021 and is the deputy spokesperson of the International Biophysics Collaboration. She has served on many committees and working groups.  Her work in proton therapy has been rewarded with the Mr et Mme Peyre prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 2021.

About Michael Grams:

Michael Grams, PhD is a board-certified medical physicist, associate professor, and researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. He collaborated with physician colleagues and started the spatially fractionated radiation therapy (SFRT) program at Mayo Clinic in 2019. He is the lead physicist responsible for all aspects of this treatment, and Mayo currently treats more than 100 patients per year with various forms of SFRT including lattice, grid, and minibeam techniques. His current research and clinical focus is on the physics and biology of minibeam radiation therapy (MBRT) and his overarching goal is to utilize the unique features of MBRT to improve outcomes for cancer patients.

5:00 PM → 5:20 PM Divide et Impera: Minibeam radiation therapy

Physics and biology are closely related in radiation therapy. By changing the physical parameters of the irradiation, i.e. the dose delivery methods, the biological response of both normal and tumoral tissues may be modified and this change can potentially be exploited for the patient’s benefit. Along this line, the highly spatially modulated dose distributions in minibeam radiation therapy (MBRT) have been shown to lead in small animal experiments to significant tumor control as well as to a reduction in normal tissue toxicities [1]. It should be noted tumor control is achieved despite using highly heterogeneous dose distributions with very low valley doses contradicting the classical paradigm of conventional radiotherapy, These observations cannot be explained with classical radiobiology concepts. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that MBRT effects may go beyond simple tumor cell death, and that the so-called non targeted effects, such as bystander effects as well as stromal and immunological changes, may play a major role in radiation response in MBRT [1]. The strategy in MBRT, “divide and conquer”, provides a very different angle of attack from conventional radiation, which can be a game changer for many difficult-to-treat cases today. This lecture will provide an overview of the state of the art of MBRT, focusing on the most recent data, to show how the field has become mature to proceed to the first clinical treatments performed recently at Mayo Clinic [2]
1. Prezado, Y., et al., Spatially fractionated radiation therapy: a critical review on current status of clinical and preclinical studies and knowledge gaps. Phys Med Biol, 2024. 69(10).
2. Grams, M.P., Minibeam radiation therapy treatment (MBRT): commissioning and first clinical implementation. International Journal Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, 2024. in press.

Speakers: yolanda prezado (European synchrotron Radiation Facility), yolanda prezado (CNRS)

5:20 PM → 5:40 PM The First Clinical Implementation of Minibeam Radiation Therapy: Why and How?

Minibeam Radiation Therapy (MBRT) is a novel and potentially paradigm-shifting cancer treatment. Unlike conventional approaches, which uniformly expose tumor and normal tissues using a wide beam of radiation, MBRT intentionally delivers a non-uniform radiation dose characterized by an alternating pattern of submillimeter wide high and low dose regions. This results in several beneficial biologic effects including less normal tissue toxicity and the potential to enhance the effectiveness of systemic therapy. Mayo Clinic recently treated the first ever patients with minibeam radiation therapy. This presentation will cover the motivation and rationale for clinically translating this promising modality, as well as the logistics of commissioning and patient treatments.

Speaker: Michael Grams

5:40 PM → 6:00 PM Discussion