Innovative Radiation Therapies

Dear Colleagues,

With 9.6 million deaths in 2018, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world (World Cancer Report, 2020). Each year, about 50% of all the people who have developed cancer are given radiation therapy at some point or another of their treatment. This non-invasive tool has become essential to treat tumors. Unfortunately, the conventional techniques currently used in clinic induce major side effects due to damage in healthy tissues. In addition, some tumors respond poorly to conventional treatments, in particular because of their radioresistance. Therefore, there is an urgent need for disruptions in technologies and protocols in the clinic to develop a precision medicine approach and personalized patient care.

This Topic is an initiative of the ambitious iNanoTheRad project of Université Paris-Saclay, which promotes innovative strategies based on irradiation by new sources (high-dose rates, high LET, spatially structured beams, plasmas) and the addition of tumor targeted nano-agents and drugs to improve the effects of radiotherapy. Strategies for treatment personalization based on artificial intelligence are also considered. This Topic is interdisciplinary and open to international experts and researchers in medical physics, radiation chemistry and physics, in numerical simulations and artificial intelligence, the development of radiation sources, radiobiology, nanoscience, nanomedicine, plasma medicine, radiotherapy, and oncology. It is intended to give visibility to important results and ideas concerning the formulation of the next generation of secured and personalized radiotherapy treatments from the lab bench to clinical applications.

Dr. Gérard Baldacchino
Prof. Dr. Eric Deutsch
Dr. Marie Dutreix
Prof. Dr. Sandrine Lacombe
Dr. Erika Porcel
Dr. Charlotte Robert
Dr. Emmanuelle Bourneuf
Dr. João Santos Sousa
Dr. Aurélien de la Lande
Topic Editors