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Published online 7 January 2009 | Nature 457, 139 (2009) | doi:10.1038/457139a
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European boost for particle therapy
Treatment centres poised to use carbon-ion beams to tackle cancer.
The first European clinical centre offering carbon-ion therapy to treat cancer is set to open early this year in Heidelberg, Germany, followed by a second facility in Pavia, Italy, by 2010.
Proponents of the technique — which uses beams of ions to kill tumour cells — say the new centres mark a significant watershed for a field that has been slowly gaining ground for more than 60 years.
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I first heard about these ideas at a roundtable discussion at a Nature conference on the Italian island of Capri. Tumors can develop clever biological characteristics to evade both chemotherapeutics and particle (irradiation) therapies. The carbon ion approach sounds useful for a subset of tumors. I am happy to hear progress on this front here in USA, at Touro. The US need not use the excuse of financial collapse and focused bankruptcy to wallow in the backwater of old technologies.