Particle Therapy to Overcome Cancer Radiation Resistance: "ARCHADE" Consortium Updates in Radiation Biology

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Radiation therapy is a medical treatment that uses high doses of radiation to kill or damage cancer cells. It works by damaging the DNA within the cancer cells, ultimately causing cell death. Radiotherapy can be used as a primary treatment, adjuvant treatment in combination with surgery or chemotherapy or palliative treatment to relieve symptoms in advanced cancer stages. Radiation therapy is constantly improving in order to enhance the effect on cancer cells and reduce the side effects on healthy tissues. Our results clearly demonstrate that proton therapy and, even more, carbon ion therapy appear as promising alternatives to overcome the radioresistance of various tumors thanks to less dependency on oxygen and a better ability to kill cancer stem cells. Interestingly, hadrons also retain the advantages of radiosensitization approaches. These data confirm the great ability of hadrons to spare healthy tissue near the tumor via various mechanisms (reduced lymphopenia, bystander effect, etc.). Technology and machine improvements such as image-guided radiotherapy or particle therapies can improve treatment quality and efficacy (dose deposition and biological effect) in tumors while increasingly sparing healthy tissues. Radiation biology can help to understand how cancer cells resist radiation (hypoxia, DNA repair mechanisms, stem cell status, cell cycle position, etc.), how normal

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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