Major funding brightens future for proton therapy

The Australian Bragg Centre for Proton Therapy and Research (ABCPTR) has been awarded $4 million by the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) to establish the Adelaide Brain Cancer Therapy and Imaging Consortium.

The funding will allow researchers to explore the potential of proton beam therapy in the hope of improving outcomes for brain cancer patients.

Brain cancer treatments can be extremely damaging, resulting in drastic long-term cognitive and motor side effects. This project will explore the potential of proton beam therapy, which unlike other forms of radiation is delivered to cancerous tissue with little harm to the surrounding normal brain tissue.

Harnessing the latest technological advances of Australia’s first proton therapy unit, this new pre-clinical consortium will for the first time in Australia leverage proton radiotherapy for research purposes, taking a unique ‘bench to bedside’ approach to design and test novel brain

cancer treatments and reduce the long-term drastic side-effects of the current treatments.

See the full story on ABC News Breakfast here.