Industry News

RaySearch

With the 2023B release in June of 2023, RaySearch introduced proton arc therapy planning in RayStation, a technique that gives more conformal dose distributions and less dose to risk organs compared to conventional IMPT plans. Since dynamic proton arc therapy is not yet supported by any delivery system, this first release is limited to the creation of discrete proton arcs, where an arc beam is delivered from many discrete angles, but where no protons are delivered while the gantry is moving.

Development ongoing in areas such as auto-replanning tailored for online adaptive treatments, accelerated optimization using the GPU, extended support for upright treatments, FLASH (under development for investigational purposes, safety, and efficacy to be determined. Not currently available for clinical use), and multi-ion treatment planning. RaySearch intends to continue to support all new delivery systems and treatment techniques that emerge on the market.

TAE Life Sciences (TAELS)

The Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica (CNAO) in Pavia (Italy) preparing the Installation of TAELS Alphabeam® BNCT system.

Franciszek Łukaszczyk Oncology Centre (FLOC) in Poland has announced to collaborate with TAELS for building up a BNCT Centre using TAE LS Alphabeam® BNCT system.

TAE Life Sciences has earned the 2023 Biotech Breakthrough Award for Oncology Innovation of the Year.

A recently published article by TAELS drug development branch (J. Med. Chem. 2023, 66, 19, 13809–13820) identifies Boronotyrosine (BTS) a promising drug candidate for BNCT. BTS outperforms conventional Boronophenylalanine (BPA) in both in vitro and in vivo models. Notably, BTS exhibited a 2- to 4-fold greater cellular uptake in vitro compared to BPA, with significantly higher boron retention within cancer cells after 18 hours. These results translated into improved boron delivery over longer periods in in vivo experiments, and a notably higher tumour-to-blood ratio compared to BPA. These findings underscore the potential of BTS to enhance the efficacy of BNCT while minimizing damage to healthy tissues. An agreement with Biddle Sawyer to exclusively manufacture our BTS drug has been achieved.

Neutron Therapeutics

Neutron Therapeutics has installed their nuBeam® compact accelerator at Shonan Kamakura General Hospital (SKGH), in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. In the photo, they stand in the treatment room in front of the accelerator. From left to right: Dr. Shinichi Gotoh, of SKGH; Dave Greenwald, CEO of Aviko; Tori Fleek, business development lead at Aviko; Noah Smick, president and COO of Neutron Therapeutics; and Colin Buckley of Buckley Systems.

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