Carbon ion radiotherapy as a treatment modality for paediatric cancers

Particle therapy with protons and carbon ions allows unique precision in delivering a high dose to the target tumour, while sparing the surrounding healthy tissues, compared with photon therapy. Carbon ion beams provide improved physical dose distributions owing to the high relative biological effectiveness of linear energy transfer. 1 Durante M Orecchia R Loeffler JS Charged-particle therapy in cancer: clinical uses and future perspectives. Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2017; 14: 483-495 Crossref PubMed Scopus (255) Google Scholar In contrast to neutron beams, which have uniformly high linear energy transfer at all depths, the linear energy transfer of carbon ion beams increases steadily with depth, reaching a maximum at the peak region. For carbon ions, the relative biological effectiveness in the target region can be 2–3 times higher than photon therapy and is influenced by many factors, such as dose, energy, and biological system. Therefore, carbon ion radiotherapy is expected to be effective against intractable, photon-resistant cancers.