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Ion beam therapy – Results from a clinical research group at the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center

New Content Item (4)Guest Edited by Prof. Oliver Jäkel

Radiotherapy with heavy charged particles has been pioneered by Heidelberg University in the last 20 years. Starting in 1997, scanned carbon ions were explored for radiotherapy at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research and since 2009, at the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) at the University Hospital Heidelberg. At HIT, proton and carbon ions have been used for treatments of more than 4000 patients until mid-2017. Currently helium and oxygen ions are investigated in preclinical research projects.  The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) has funded preclinical and clinical research at HIT within a clinical research group for many years.

This special issue published in Radiation Oncology summarizes some of the highlights of this research group and gathers articles from the field of medical physics and radiobiology, as well as clinical results for a variety of tumor entities.  The main focus is on the effects of organ motion in scanned beam delivery, the radiobiological effectiveness of light ion beams and biomarkers applied.  The clinical application addresses tumors of the brain, skull base and lung, as well as hepatic and pancreatic tumors.

  1. This work addresses a basic inconsistency in the way dose is accumulated in radiotherapy when predicting the biological effect based on the linear quadratic model (LQM). To overcome this inconsistency, we intr...

    Authors: Nina I. Niebuhr, Mona Splinter, Tilman Bostel, Joao Seco, Clemens M. Hentschke, Ralf O. Floca, Juliane Hörner-Rieber, Markus Alber, Peter Huber, Nils H. Nicolay and Asja Pfaffenberger
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2021 16:65
  2. Lung cancer is a fatal disease and a serious health problem worldwide. Patients are usually diagnosed at an advanced stage, and the effectiveness of chemotherapy for such patients is very limited. Iodine 125 s...

    Authors: Qing Jin, Cunzhi Lin, Xinhong Zhu, Yiwei Cao, Caihong Guo and Lijun Wang
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2020 15:238

    The Correction to this article has been published in Radiation Oncology 2021 16:214

  3. To determine the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) and α/β-values after fractionated carbon ion irradiations of the rat spinal cord with varying linear energy transfer (LET) to benchmark RBE-model calculati...

    Authors: Maria Saager, Christin Glowa, Peter Peschke, Stephan Brons, Rebecca Grün, Michael Scholz, Jürgen Debus and Christian P. Karger
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2020 15:6
  4. Helium (4He) ion beam therapy provides favorable biophysical characteristics compared to currently administered particle therapies, i.e., reduced lateral scattering and enhanced biological damage to deep-seated t...

    Authors: Stewart Mein, Ivana Dokic, Carmen Klein, Thomas Tessonnier, Till Tobias Böhlen, Guiseppe Magro, Julia Bauer, Alfredo Ferrari, Katia Parodi, Thomas Haberer, Jürgen Debus, Amir Abdollahi and Andrea Mairani
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2019 14:123
  5. Commissioning of treatment planning systems (TPS) and beam delivery for scanned light ion beams is an important quality assurance task. This requires measurement of large sets of high quality dosimetric data i...

    Authors: O. Jäkel, B. Ackermann, S. Ecker, M. Ellerbrock, P. Heeg, K. Henkner and M. Winter
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2019 14:77
  6. Uncertainties associated with the delivery of treatment to moving organs might compromise the accuracy of treatment. This study explores the impact of intra-fractional anatomical changes in pancreatic patients...

    Authors: Vania Batista, Daniel Richter, Naved Chaudhri, Patrick Naumann, Klaus Herfarth and Oliver Jäkel
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:120
  7. Ion beam radiotherapy provides potential for increased dose conformation to the target volume. To translate it into a clinical advantage, it is necessary to guarantee a precise alignment of the actual internal...

    Authors: M. Martišíková, T. Gehrke, S. Berke, G. Aricò and O. Jäkel
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:109
  8. With the advance of modern irradiation techniques, the role of radiotherapy (RT) for intracranial meningioma has increased significantly throughout the past years. Despite that tumor’s generally favorable outc...

    Authors: Rami A. El Shafie, Maja Czech, Kerstin A. Kessel, Daniel Habermehl, Dorothea Weber, Stefan Rieken, Nina Bougatf, Oliver Jäkel, Jürgen Debus and Stephanie E. Combs
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:86
  9. To evaluate the impact of 68Ga-DOTATOC-PET on treatment planning and sparing of normal tissue in the treatment of skull base meningioma with advanced photons and protons.

    Authors: Falk Stade, Jan-Oliver Dittmar, Oliver Jäkel, Clemens Kratochwil, Uwe Haberkorn, Jürgen Debus and Stephanie E. Combs
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:58
  10. Meningiomas of the skull base account for 25–30% of all meningiomas. Due to the complex structure of the cranial base and its close proximity to critical structures, surgery is often associated with substantia...

    Authors: Rami A. El Shafie, Maja Czech, Kerstin A. Kessel, Daniel Habermehl, Dorothea Weber, Stefan Rieken, Nina Bougatf, Oliver Jäkel, Jürgen Debus and Stephanie E. Combs
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:54
  11. The present work summarizes the research activities on radiation-induced late effects in the rat spinal cord carried out within the “clinical research group ion beam therapy” funded by the German Research Foun...

    Authors: Maria Saager, Peter Peschke, Thomas Welzel, Lifi Huang, Stephan Brons, Rebecca Grün, Michael Scholz, Jürgen Debus and Christian P. Karger
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:5
  12. Due to their favorable physical and biological properties, helium ion beams are increasingly considered a promising alternative to proton beams for radiation therapy. Hence, this work aims at comparing in-silico ...

    Authors: Thomas Tessonnier, Andrea Mairani, Wenjing Chen, Paola Sala, Francesco Cerutti, Alfredo Ferrari, Thomas Haberer, Jürgen Debus and Katia Parodi
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:2
  13. Patients with Echinoderm microtubule-associated protein-like 4 (EML4)-anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) positive lung cancer are sensitive to ALK-kinase inhibitors. TAE684 is a potent second generation ALK inhi...

    Authors: Ying Dai, Quanxiang Wei, Christian Schwager, Janina Hanne, Cheng Zhou, Klaus Herfarth, Stefan Rieken, Kenneth E. Lipson, Jürgen Debus and Amir Abdollahi
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:1
  14. Hypoxia-induced radioresistance constitutes a major obstacle for a curative treatment of cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate effects of photon and carbon ion irradiation in combination with inhibi...

    Authors: Carmen Klein, Ivana Dokic, Andrea Mairani, Stewart Mein, Stephan Brons, Peter Häring, Thomas Haberer, Oliver Jäkel, Astrid Zimmermann, Frank Zenke, Andree Blaukat, Jürgen Debus and Amir Abdollahi
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:208
  15. Pancreatic cancer, especially in case of locally advanced stage has a poor prognosis. Radiotherapy in general can lead to tumor volume reduction, but further improvements, such as ion beam therapy have to be p...

    Authors: Constantin Dreher, Daniel Habermehl, Oliver Jäkel and Stephanie E. Combs
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:203
  16. The rapid rise of particle therapy across the world necessitates evidence to justify its ever-increasing utilization. This narrative review summarizes the current status of these technologies on treatment of b...

    Authors: Sebastian Adeberg, Semi B. Harrabi, Vivek Verma, Denise Bernhardt, Nicole Grau, Jürgen Debus and Stefan Rieken
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:193
  17. To summarize the research activities of the “clinical research group heavy ion therapy”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, KFO 214), on the impact of intrinsic tumor characteristics (grading, hypo...

    Authors: Christin Glowa, Peter Peschke, Stephan Brons, Oliver C. Neels, Klaus Kopka, Jürgen Debus and Christian P. Karger
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:174
  18. Normal lung tissue tolerance constitutes a limiting factor in delivering the required dose of radiotherapy to cure thoracic and chest wall malignancies. Radiation-induced lung fibrosis (RILF) is considered a c...

    Authors: Cheng Zhou, Bleddyn Jones, Mahmoud Moustafa, Christian Schwager, Julia Bauer, Bing Yang, Liji Cao, Min Jia, Andrea Mairani, Ming Chen, Longhua Chen, Juergen Debus and Amir Abdollahi
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:172
  19. Scanned ion beam therapy has special demands for treatment of intra-fractionally moving tumors such as lesions in lung or liver. Interplay effects between beam and organ motion can in those settings lead to un...

    Authors: Christoph Bert and Klaus Herfarth
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:170
  20. For irradiation treatment planning of meningiomas the use of PET-scans is well established. The most frequently used tracers are either based on amino acids or the somatostatin receptor ligand DOTATOC. Since u...

    Authors: Jan Oliver Dittmar, Clemens Kratochwil, Anne Dittmar, Thomas Welzel, Daniel Habermehl, Stefan Rieken, Frederik L. Giesel, Uwe Haberkorn, Jürgen Debus and Stephanie E. Combs
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:169