Advances in charged particle therapy

One out of three individuals will be confronted with the diagnosis of cancer in the course of his/her lifetime. Roughly 45% of these patients can be cured. The main treatment modalities to fight against cancer are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Whereas systematic approaches like chemotherapy only account for 5% of the cures local approaches like surgery, radiotherapy or combinations of both account for 40% of the successful treatments. These very general numbers clearly point out the relevance of local treatment modalities. Any progress in this area is most welcome. For about 2/3 of cancer patients the disease is localized at the time of diagnosis and therefore is well suited to be successfully treated. Anyhow, in 18% of all patients the local treatment modalities fail, which accounts for 280.000 deaths per year in EC! Radiation therapy could substantially be boosted by making the potential of charged particles available. For the EC 30.000 patients per year are expected to be cured if proton and ...