Curing Cancer with Proton Beams - with Suzie Sheehy
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- čas přidán 14. 09. 2016
- Particle accelerators do more than just particle physics research. Suzie Sheehy takes a look at the history and promise of proton therapy: using particle accelerators to fight cancer.
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The discovery of X-rays in 1895 was the start of the first breakthrough in modern cancer treatment. Wilhelm Röntgen used a cathode ray tube to generate X-rays. It didn’t take long for the destructive power of these rays to be turned to medicinal benefit. X-rays kill cancer cells through ionization. By stripping electrons from water molecules, the X-ray photons leave a highly chemically reactive wake. The reactive water molecules bind to, and destroy, DNA.
But X-ray beams don’t differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells, so their destructive force is hard to localize to the problem zones alone. One option is to use protons, rather than X-ray photons. Particle accelerators can take protons from inside a Hydrogen atom, form them into high energy beams and more specifically target a tumour.
However, instead of passing through the body like X-ray photons, the protons stop at the tumour, thanks to a phenomenon called the ‘Bragg peak’. By tuning the energy of a proton beam, the dose can be much more carefully controlled.
This video is supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Watch the rest in this series here: • Particle Accelerators ...
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Outstanding explanation! Thank you.
Suzie Sheehy's talk about particle accelerators posted here 4 weeks ago was fantastic - well worth a watch.
True fact^^
Anyone who wants to watch it, it's here: czcams.com/video/jLmciZdh5j4/video.html
Fascinating. We have one of those proton therapy centers here in the Oklahoma City metro area, and I have heard about how advanced it is compared to older methods. Now I understand why it's such an exciting technology. Thanks for another great video!
I love all your RI videos. I work at Mevion so it was super cool to see our machine in your video! Had to do a double-take.
While having a better targeting option is always a great thing, wouldn't a very similar result be achieved with an old, non-depth-targeted beam by simply pivoting it around to different angles, keeping it always pointed at its tumor target?
Yes this technique is already done with x-ray radiotherapy (as well as using intensity modulation) to achieve the desired dose profile, but with x-rays there will always be an exit dose as the beam goes out the other side. With protons, the exit dose is (literally) zero, so the same technique can be used of delivering protons at different angles, but will achieve a superior result. In some cases that might not be required, but my oncology colleagues tell me this is particularly good for tumours near to sensitive organs and in childhood cancer cases where any increased risk of secondary malignancy should be avoided. Of course, this requires a large magnetic beam line that rotates around the patient (called a gantry). There is also a small biological advantage of using protons, they are slightly more effective at killing cancer cells (see 'radiobiological effect, or RBE'), and if we use heavier ions (carbon, helium etc) then that biological advantage increases further.
Superb video, thank you.
"Fighting" and "Treating" are much better words, instead of "Curing."
More videos like this thank you.
thats amazing
Excellent
Very interesting!
The LHC uses a proton beam. What would happen if you used that on someone's cancer. Would it kill the cancer.
wow
How good is she eh😜 go Suzie
Count one more particle accelerator. My favorite oscilloscope still uses one. lol
+Tim Teatro now don't tell me that I'm not realising my mistake when I Already mentioned it.
Wrong there's way more particle accelerators a CRT T.V. Is a particle accelerator
Meh, I see what you're saying, and you're not wrong, but we don't generally regard cathode-ray-tubes as particle accelerators in the same sense as a cyclotron. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're just using the term in a way that isn't widely used in the physics community.
okay I can understand that Tim Teatro
good hopes ... for rich people....
Is this better than
TOMOTHERAPY???
What happened?getting into physics stuff.where's the chemistry.(this is physical chemistry though.)
Radiation interaction with matter is physics.
Speaking as a physicist who has worked a lot in quantum chemistry, I can tell you that there is no thin line where physics ends and chemistry begins. That said, most would agree that particle scattering if classically a problem of physics, not chemistry, so I'm not sure why you lament the physics.
Chemistry has too many words that are hard to spell so they wisely avoid the subject.
***** well isn't that just what's wrong with the world. Intellectual laziness.
You can't differentiate Between chemistry and physics it's beyond us(humans).Physics is dependent on chemistry and chemistry is manoeuvring physics.there are branches of chemistry like chemical dynamics,quantum chemistry,chemistry physics and many more and this covers the topic of particle accelerators is owned by chemistry.I guess you just really have a brief idea of science.No one can imagine physical science no matter how much they study are become a nerd or something.Chemistry is the central sciences it bridges other sciences.
Please, ionisation is not a cure for cancer... the cure of a disease must address the cause (and the cause of cancer is not the lack high-speed protons).
Then again, why cure someone once and for all when you can treat them with costly techniques instead?
What are you talking about? You want to repair the mutations of the cancer cells?
Once cancer is there, it doesn't go away because you drink some juice.
This is often true, but in this case is a gross oversimplification. Cancer is the disease, not the symptom. Removing the tumors often results in complete remission because the root cause was incidental, and not chronic.
Dr Doug Wallace - /watch?v=KwbIR2yUziw
Maybe it's not all about nuclear genome... Dr Doug Wallace correlates the degree of "mitochondrial heteroplasmy" with many common diseases, including cancer.
I think we need to look more into cellular organelles if we're going to truly cure cancer, autoimmune disorders etc. Dr Wallace criticises physicians for isolating organ systems in medicine when the disease seems to come from within the cell.