Around half of all cancer patients have some form of radiotherapy included in their treatment management. A significant challenge with external beam radiotherapy is that the beam deposits doses in all traversed tissue and thus damages healthy tissue as well. Damage to normal tissues can lead to unwanted side effects which negatively impact patients’ quality of life. In brachytherapy and radionuclide therapy, radiation sources are placed directly inside the body such that the radiation dose is deposited locally, inside the tumour, and does less damage to the healthy tissue.

In the Bristol Particle Physics group, researchers are using computational algorithms known as the Monte Carlo methods, developed to calculate the deposited energy in particle detectors, to calculate the deposited energy in DNA during irradiation and how much of it is damaged during the process. These models can improve our understanding of how DNA damage occurs. 

The team around Professor Jaap Velthuis is mainly focusing on the evaluation of the effectiveness of α-particle based therapies by investigating in-silico (experimentation performed by a computer) the distribution and complexity of radiation induced DNA damage in these treatments. The high linear energy transfer of α-particles causes more complex DNA damage which is harder for the cell to repair. As a result, the a-particles do a lot of damage to the DNA.  Furthermore, α-particles have a limited range in the body and thus will only damage the cells in the tumour. This work will lead to a better understanding of novel treatments and allow the comparison of the effectiveness of different treatment modalities.

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Jaap-Velthuis-9847498a-837b-4212-bdc0-5fe5230c9325/

Pubilcations:

• Velthuis J et al. (2023). Performance of a Full-Scale Upstream MAPS-Based Verification Device for Radiotherapy. Sensors. 
• Beck L et al. (2020). A novel approach to contamination suppression in transmission detectors for radiotherapy. IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences.
• Pritchard JL et al. (2020). High-resolution MLC leaf position measurements with a large area MAPS. IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences.