Pioneering technology for cancer treatment to be tested in UK

A pioneering technology that scans and treats cancer at the same time would be tested on patients in the UK.

Experts have high hopes from the new MR-Linac machines to be installed at two centres in Surrey and Manchester in the UK. According to experts, the machines could open up a new era in personalised radiotherapy.

The machine packs MRI scanning and tumour-busting radiation treatment in one high-tech package.

The UK has been allotted two of only seven of the machines, initially for use in clinical trials.

One of the machines would be commissioned at the Royal Marsden Hospital's site in Sutton, Surrey, early next year.

According to professor Uwe Oelfke, of the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, a major problem for radiotherapy was that patients' internal anatomy changed ''from day to day or even from second to second''.

The ability to view highly-detailed MRI images of a radiotherapy target site would allow far more accurate treatment causing less damage to healthy tissue and fewer side effects.

''It's extremely important for the success of radiation therapies that we can see what we want to treat at the time of the treatment, not diagnostic images which are basically reflecting the anatomical state a few days or weeks before the treatment,'' said Oelfke.

''With MRI you can constantly monitor the patient while treatment is taking place and adapt the dose precisely to the individual. This will allow a truly new practice of personalised radiation therapy.''

According to Oelfke, the MR-Linac machine would also make real-time monitoring of a patient's response to treatment possible, marking a ''step change''.

In an early trial at the Royal Marsden aimed at demonstrating the machine's safety and effectiveness, two dozen patients would undergo treatment.

The recruited patients would include those with tumours affecting different parts of the body including brain, head and neck, lung, oesophageal, pancreatic, breast, prostate, cervix and rectal cancers. They would be among the first in the world to use the machine.

Later studies would compare outcomes for patients given standard radiotherapy and those using the MR-Linac.

According to professor Kevin Harrington, joint head of radiotherapy and imaging at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, the UK would play a central role in the development of this new technology for the treatment of cancer.