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    • What is cancer?
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      • View 45 other cancers
    • Coping with a diagnosis
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      • Targeted therapy
      • Hormone therapy
      • Clinical trials
      • Palliative treatment
    • Managing side effects
      • Fatigue
      • Taste and smell changes
      • Hair loss
      • Pain and cancer
      • Peripheral neuropathy
      • Changes in thinking and memory
      • Lymphoedema
      • Mouth health
      • Nutrition and cancer
      • Breast prostheses and reconstruction
      • Fertility
      • Sexuality
    • Supporting someone with cancer
      • Caring for someone with cancer
      • Caring for someone with advanced cancer
      • Family and friends
      • Supportive schools
      • Supportive workplaces
      • Caring for mob with cancer
    • Living well during and after treatment
      • Nutrition and cancer
      • Exercise and cancer
      • Complementary therapies
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      • Living with advanced cancer
      • Caring for someone with advanced cancer
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      • Resources in different languages
      • Resources for LGBTQI+ people
    • Fact sheets, podcasts and more
      • Cancer resource hub – fact sheets, booklets and more
      • Cancer Council Podcasts
  • Get Support
    Our cancer helpline consultants are ready for your call to support all people impacted by cancer. We may be able to assist with direct support services or by putting you in touch with other people who can support you.
    • 13 11 20 – Speak to a cancer professional
    • How can we help you
      • Accommodation during treatment
      • Cancer Counselling
      • Financial Support
      • Legal & Workplace Support
      • Transport to treatment
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    • Coping with a diagnosis
      • Coping with emotions
      • Talking to kids about cancer
      • Cancer and your finances
      • Cancer and work
      • Cancer care and your rights
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    • Cancer stories
    • Cancer podcasts
    • Meditation and relaxation podcasts
  • Preventing Cancer
    Discover lifestyle choices to minimise your risk of getting cancer and the importance of screening and early detection for cancer survival.
    • Healthy diet and exercise
      • Limit alcohol
      • Be a healthy weight
      • Move more, sit less
      • Healthy Made Tasty
      • Our Kids Our Call
    • Quit smoking and vaping
      • Quit smoking
      • Tackling Tobacco
      • Smoke free environments
      • Electronic cigarettes
      • Generation Vape
    • Sun protection
      • Slip on a shirt
      • Slop on sunscreen
      • Slap on a hat
      • Seek shade
      • Slide on sunglasses
      • SunSmart NSW website
      • Improve your long game
      • Outdoor workers
      • Sporting groups
      • Buy sun protection products online
    • Screening and early detection
      • Cervical screening
      • Bowel cancer screening
      • Breast cancer screening
      • Lung cancer screening
      • Testicular cancer
      • Prostate cancer
      • Ovarian cancer
      • Liver cancer and hepatitis B
      • Check for skin cancer
    • CanAct – campaigning for better policies
    • Cancer Council shops
  • Research
    Research programs save lives, improve treatments and quality of life for cancer survivors.
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      • Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea
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  • Adapting radiotherapy for safer and more effective tumour control

Adapting radiotherapy for safer and more effective tumour control

Professor Paul Keall The University of Sydney $406,127 2019–2021

Background

Radiotherapy is an important part of cancer treatment. Australian research indicates almost half of all cancer patients should have external beam radiotherapy at least once during their treatment.

External beam radiotherapy uses a radiation machine to direct radiation beams at the cancer. The machines are incredibly precise, but their targets are always moving. Even when we lie perfectly still, our bodies are always in motion – we breathe, our hearts beat, our muscles twitch, we swallow and we digest. This means that a cancer tumour is also never perfectly still. To overcome natural movement, standard radiotherapy treatments use a larger radiation beam than is needed to treat the whole tumour. This approach results in healthy tissue also being exposed to radiation.

To tackle this problem, Professor Keall and his team invented a system that adjusts the position of radiation beams in real-time. Called ’beam adaptation’, the system adjusts the radiation beams to target the tumour continuously; essentially following the tumour as it makes even the slightest of movements without damaging healthy tissue.

A limitation of beam adaptation is that it can currently only be used to treat a single tumour. This means that if a person has developed two or more tumours, standard radiotherapy is the only option.

The research

In this project, Professor Keall and his team at the University of Sydney and the Royal North Shore Hospital will take adaptive radiotherapy to the next level, enhancing the system to target and move with multiple tumours.

The researchers will focus on developing adaptive radiotherapy for locally advanced lung, prostate and oligometastatic cancer (multiple tumours that have spread beyond the primary site). They’ll use simulated treatment scenarios to refine the system, before testing in a phase one clinical trial.

The impact

Beam adaptation is beneficial for any tumour type that moves during radiotherapy treatment delivery. It’s been shown to improve tumour control, while reducing unwanted side effects.

The ground-breaking technology can be installed on any standard radiotherapy machine, but it’s so new that currently Professor Keall’s is the only team in the world treating patients with beam adaptation. If they can successfully expand beam adaptation to treat patients with multiple tumours, it would double the number of patients who could potentially benefit from this safer and more effective treatment approach.

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