Project: Small Animal Radiotherapy Dosimetry Planning system
Background:_x000D_Many millions suffer from cancer every year. One of the CO weapons against this disease is radiotherapy: treatment with photon radiation beams which aim to eradicate the tumor, while at the same time sparing the surrounding healthy tissue as much as possible. This is to avoid debilitating side effects, or induction of secondary cancers. It is, however, very well known that patients who received the same dose of radiation, may experience a very different outcome ranging from total cure to death. In addition, modern radiotherapy technology has many degrees of freedom allowing large dose gradients and large variations in dose rate (dose per unit time), of which the effects have not been studied thoroughly. Clearly, there are some important aspects of the interaction of radiation and the tumor and its environment which are not sufficiently understood to optimally harness radiation in the battle against cancer. _x000D__x000D_In medicine, new methodologies, drugs or technology are usually put through rigorous trials, of which an important component is testing hypotheses in pre-clinical models (i.e. small animals such as mice). Historically, in radiotherapy, this approach has almost never been followed. Instead, new developments have often been applied directly on patients, without any pre-clinical trials. The rationale was often based on a perceived improvement in technology, but this has also led to an incomplete understanding of the interaction of radiation and tumor/healthy tissue. Recently, scientists in radiotherapy have realized that much knowledge may be gained from studying radiation treatments pre-clinically but the essential point is here that the treatment should be downscaled from the human to the small animal level in an intelligent way. This means that pre-clinical technology to deliver radiation dose had to be designed from scratch. This has recently resulted in the development of highly specialized radiation equipment, combined with high-resolution imaging technology, capable of performing radiotherapy studies in pre-clinical small animal models. This new field of radiotherapy study is termed by us SmART (small animal radiotherapy)._x000D__x000D_In human radiotherapy, accurate delivery of radiation is enabled by highly sophisticated software, known as the treatment planning system (TPS). This consists of complex algorithms that are designed to work with imaging information from various modalities (CT, MR, PET, US), and to translate the desired dose distribution in the tumor and the surrounding healthy tissue into a treatment plan that allows the therapy equipment to direct radiation beams to achieve the same dose distribution in a patient. A TPS of similar accuracy and complexity is also required for pre-clinical studies, but is currently not available. Without this, accurate radiotherapy studies in small animals will not be possible, potentially rendering the new field of SmART inadequate. _x000D__x000D_Goals of the project:_x000D_In the SmART-DOSE project we will develop a highly sophisticated TPS for pre-clinical studies, in analogy with the most modern human TPS. It will enable accurate pre-clinical radiotherapy studies in small animals, of which the results can be translated into human radiotherapy. The TPS will be made commercially available to the rapidly growing community of SmART investigators worldwide. The TPS may potentially make clinical translation a much more efficient process, thereby saving significant clinical financial resources. Translated to the scale of cancer therapy, this could constitute a significant economic impact. _x000D__x000D_The project consortium:_x000D_RaySearch Laboratories AB is based in Stockholm (Sweden) and is the developer of the most sophisticated human TPS commercially available (RayStation)._x000D__x000D_Maastro Clinic is a research radiotherapy clinic in the south of the Netherlands (Maastricht). It is one of the leading radiotherapy research institutes in new applications of physics and imaging in radiotherapy, decision models for therapy, and molecular radiobiology._x000D__x000D_Maastro Clinic and RaySearch Laboratories will jointly develop a novel TPS for pre-clinical studies. Maastro Clinic will contribute its knowledge in small animal radiotherapy, develop first versions of the many algorithms needed and do product testing. RaySearch will contribute towards the development of the algorithms, and adapt and integrate the algorithms in their software platform RayStation, which is an advanced TPS for radiotherapy of humans._x000D__x000D_
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Acronym
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SmART-DOSE
(Reference Number: 8499)
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Duration
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01/01/2014 - 31/12/2016
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Project Topic
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The objective is to develop, and make comercially available, a sophisticated treatment planning system (TPS) for pre-clinical radiotherapy studies in small animals, of which the results can be translated into human radiotherapy. No such TPS is available today.
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Network
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Eurostars
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Call
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Eurostars Cut-Off 10
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Project partner
