Aiming for precision: How beam adaptation is transforming cancer treatment
This year’s recipient of the 2025 Sally Crossing AM Award is Professor Paul Keall, who leads the Image X Institute at the University of Sydney, for engaging consumers throughout his research which has positively impacted the lives of millions of cancer patients.
“We have ample motivation to advance cancer research towards meaningful improvement in the lives and livelihoods of people with cancer. Myself, and most of my team have had family members and friends affected by cancer. This personal experience, along with the engagement of our consumer advocates keeps us very grounded and focused.” says Professor Keall.
A smarter way to treat cancer
When someone is diagnosed with cancer, every treatment decision matters. One of the most common treatments is radiotherapy, which uses high-energy beams to target cancer cells. But the challenge is tumours move when we breathe and digest food, which happens even while lying still, which means that the surrounding healthy tissue can move into the path of the radiation beam.
That’s where beam adaptation comes in.
Professor Keall says, “beam adaptation dynamically shapes the radiation to target the tumour as it moves to ensure the radiation beam always hits the tumour and avoids the surrounding healthy tissue, significantly reducing radiation side effects.”
From one tumour to many
Thanks to a grant from Cancer Council NSW in 2019, Professor Keall’s team expanded this technology to treat multiple tumours at once, even on standard radiotherapy machines.
This means more people, especially those with advanced cancers, can benefit from this innovation.
Each year in Australia, around 14,800 people are diagnosed with lung cancer and more than 24,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Thanks to advancements in imaging technology, the number of lung cancer patients eligible for adaptive radiotherapy could increase from 16% to 38%, and for prostate cancer patients, from 52% to 90%.
“Overall, the recent developments have transformed our beam adaption technology from one target to many,” says Professor Keall. “Adapting radiotherapy to simultaneously hit multiple moving cancer targets.”
For patients, beam adaptation enables a safer and more effective treatment which means less damage to healthy tissue, fewer side effects, and shorter treatment times.
“We can now deliver radiation with sub-millimetre accuracy,” says Professor Keall. “That means we can target the cancer and not the healthy tissue.”
From the lab to the world
To make this technology available globally, it needs to be turned into a product by a company, this process is called commercialisation and can take many years, “the timescale can vary from several years to twenty years or more,” says Professor Keall.
This year, The Sally Crossing AM Award, will fund a Clinical Trial Coordinator – a key role in bringing this technology to patients.
“The coordinator is the bridge between the scientific developments and patients” explains Professor Keall. “They make sure patients have early access to and benefit from the research.”
He adds, “as our research is applicable to all major cancer types and radiotherapy is essential for treatment and symptom control for half of all cancer patients, success means a global real-world impact on the lives of millions of cancer patients.”
Professor Keall and his team are working with clinicians, researchers and advocates to bring this technology to more people, faster. The goal is simple: better treatment, fewer side effects, and a better experience for patients everywhere.
“Thank you! Your generosity is making a difference to the lives and livelihoods of people and their families affected by cancer.”