群馬大学博士課程教育リーディングプログラム特別教育講演

Prof. Oliver Jäkel (ハイデルベルグ大学)Professor for Medical Physics, Department for Radiation Oncology, University Hospital Heidelberg

Head of Medical Physics, Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center

重粒子線医工学グローバルリーダー養成プログラム国際アドバイザリーボード

担当: 金井 (重粒子線医学研究センター)連絡先: 8378

担当: 金井 (重粒子線医学研究センター)連絡先: 8378

Status of the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center

日時: 2012年12月12日 (水) 15:00-16：30場所: 重粒子線医学センターカンファレンス室

Heidelberg University has a long standing experience in radiotherapy with carbon ions. Between 1997 and 2008, 440 patients

were treated within a pilot project at the German national heavy ion research center (GSI) near Darmstadt. This project was run by

a collaboration of the dep. for Radiation Oncology in Heidelberg, the GSI and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). In

1998 a proposal for funding a hospital based heavy ion center in Heidelberg was handed in to the German ministry of research.

The project finally received partial funding by the German government in 2003 and the construction of the Heidelberg Ion Beam

Therapy Center (HIT) was initiated by the University hospital. The clinical operation started in late 2009. Since then more than

1000 patients were treated with beams of carbon ions and protons. Just recently the operation of the world’s first gantry for heavy

ions started at HIT.

HIT is the first treatment center treating patients with beams of carbon ions and protons outside of Japan. The facility uses a

dedicated synchrotron accelerator and offers patient treatments in three rooms as well as a dedicated experimental area. It has a

number of unique technical features:

•The beam delivery is based on the raster scanning method, using magnetic deflection of the beam to cover the target and active

variation of the beam energy. This technology was developed and used at GSI for patient treatments since 1997.

•Besides two fixed horizontal beam-lines, an isocentric scanning gantry was installed. It’s the only gantry for carbon ions

worldwide and also relies on beam scanning.

•To achieve the highest setup accuracy, robotic based imaging and positioning of patients was installed.

•The facility not only offers protons and carbon ions, which can be switched within less than a minute, but in addition ion sources

for helium and oxygen are available.

All these technical features offer a lot of research possibilities in the fields of medical physics, radiation biology and clinical

radiation oncology for the near future and a vital research program was started in parallel to the patient treatments.

Research in the field of medical physics is concentrating on development of new detector technologies, treatment planning

algorithms and strategies for the treatment of moving organs with a scanned beam. In addition we started to investigate also the

possibility to use carbon ions beams for imaging of the patient.

The radiobiological research is focused on the molecular basis of radiation damage as well as in-vivo investigations for a better

understanding especially of late effects in normal tissue after high LET irradiation.

The clinical research program is currently running 12 clinical trials, which can be roughly categorized into three areas:

•Comparative trails between carbon and protons to quantify the potential clinical benefit from high LET radiation.

•Trials investigating the outcome of combination therapy of carbon ions with various systemic drugs. This is common state of the

art for many tumor entities in conventional RT, but only little data are available for high LET radiation.

•Trials for the treatment of new indications, in order to widen the spectrum of diseases, for which patients may have a benefit from

a high LET treatment.

In the talk the rationale for heavy ion radiotherapy will be explained and the technology of the HIT facility will be outlined.

Additionally, some highlights from the mentioned research areas will be shown.