Spatio-temporal dependency of radiotherapy induced cardiac toxicity in a novel preclinical model

放射治疗是治疗多种癌症的绝佳方法，大约一半的患者可以通过放射治疗治愈。尽管放射治疗取得了成功，但它也会导致有害的副作用，这些副作用可能会对治疗后患者的生活质量和生存造成严重后果。特别是，接受不同癌症胸部放射治疗的患者可能会在心脏产生不想要的副作用，这可能危及生命。在这个项目中，我们将研究不同的策略，通过优化放射治疗的交付，可能能够将放射治疗的影响降至最低。这将侧重于避免心脏中对辐射非常敏感的结构，并将使用一种名为闪光放射治疗的新技术以非常高的剂量率进行放射治疗。我们将利用这些信息来设计更好的放射治疗方法，以减少对心脏的有害影响，允许进行更高剂量的放射治疗，从而改善患者的预后。

Radiotherapy is an excellent treatment for many types of cancer and about half of all patients can be cured by its use. Despite its success, radiotherapy can result in harmful side effects which can have severe consequences on the quality of life and survival of patients following treatment. In particular, patients who receive chest radiotherapy for different cancers may develop unwanted side effects in the heart which can be life threatening. In this project, we will investigate different strategies that may be capable of minimizing the effects of radiotherapy by optimising radiotherapy is delivered. This will focus on avoiding structures in the heart that are very sensitive to radiation and will use a new technique to deliver radiotherapy at very high dose rates called FLASH-RT. We will use this information to design better ways of delivering radiotherapy that will reduce harmful effects in the heart, allowing even higher doses of radiotherapy to delivered which could improve outcomes for patients.