Ansell and Bailey's Royal Marsden MR LINAC in the News

The Evening Standard reported as follows:

CANCER patients in London are to be

offered the world’s most accurate form

of radiotherapy in what doctors say

could be a “game changer” in treating

the disease.

Work is under way at the Institute of

Cancer Research to install the first MRI

scanner that is also able to deliver

bursts of radiation in “real time”, rather

than requiring doctors to rely on scans

taken days or weeks earlier.

Clinical trials involving patients under

the care of The Royal Marsden Hospital

are expected to start in 2017, with 20 to

30 patients a day, including children,

being treated.

If the £10 million project is a success,

it will offer new hope to patients with

advanced breast, prostate and lung

cancer, and could eradicate the need

for kidney cancer surgery.

The trial of the MR Linac machine is

linked to pilot schemes at six other

cancer centres across the world. People

with brain tumours and head and neck,

gynaecological, pancreatic and oesophageal

cancers will also be treated.

Professor Kevin Harrington, the

clinical lead, said: “Over the course of

the next decade the majority of patients

who receive radiation with curative

intent may well be treated with a

machine such as the MR Linac.

“There are two broad goals. The first

is to make radiation far more accurate,

so we are hitting the target with far

greater precision.

We are not ‘shooting in the dark’ at

present, but we have to put margins in

[around the tumour] of around 5mm.

We are hoping to reduce that to 1mm,

2mm, 3mm. The volume of normal tissue

we spare will be very large in comparison,

and the savings in terms of side

effects are potentially huge.

“Secondly, not only can we use the

MRI to see where the tumour is, we can

look at the biological processes within

the tumour. We will be watching what

the tumour is doing second by second,

how it is responding to the radiation.”

Being able to radiate a tumour in real

time is a huge step forward because

many tumours move in unpredictable

ways within the body.

A 10m-deep bunker is being dug at the

Institute of Cancer Research’s Sutton

campus to house the machine. The

treatment room will link to the adjacent

Royal Marsden. Professor Uwe Oelfke,

an expert in imaging and radiotherapy

at the institute, said: “We would be

entering into a new era of personalised

radiotherapy.”

Tags: Healthcare Architects London UK. Medical Architecture.