The British company Advanced Oncotherapy announced the acquisition of ADAM S.A., a CERN spinoff, meaning a company created to develop commercial applications of technologies initially created for scientific purposes. In this case, it’s a less expensive and more advanced version of the proton beam therapy, a form of radiation therapy used for the treatment of tumors.
The Large Hadron Collider is the largest particle accelerator in the world but its huge size is necessary to achieve the extremely high energies needed for the most advanced physics experiments. However, today it’s possible to convert one of the smaller accelerators called Low Energy Ion Ring (Leir) (photo ©Rama) that fire atoms in the Large Hadron Collider to build much smaller machines that can accelerate proton beams with extreme precision at the speed needed in cancer therapies.
Proton beam therapy is based on the use of protons which in simple terms are used as projectiles to hit cancer cells damaging their DNA and therefore killing them. Compared to other forms of radiation therapy, it has the advantage of being able to focus the beam of protons with extreme precision on tumor tissue greatly limiting the risk of damage to healthy tissue adjacent to cancer.
The controversy over proton beam therapy concerns the real benefits compared to cheaper forms of radiotherapy. The machinery for proton beam therapy currently on the market have costs that exceed 120 million Euros. Advanced Oncotherapy will offer the Linac Image Guided Hadron Technology (LIGHT), a machine created by adapting to medicine technologies developed at CERN, at a cost of about 30 million Euros.
According to the manufacturer, the LIGHT is also more sophisticated than the other machines of that type because it allows to adjust the power of the beam of protons in the various parts of the tumor. This allows to set up a better therapy following the tumor in three dimensions very quickly and to have less risk of side effects.
The LIGHT will be available for use in 2016 but Advanced Oncotherapy has already received orders from hospitals of various nations. In the past, scientific research has brought technological advances that have subsequently been applied in completely different fields, including medical use. In addition to helping us discover the secrets of the universe and giving us the world wide web, CERN helps to save many lives.
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