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The BELLA PW laser proton beamline: a new platform for ultra-high dose rate radiobiological research

ORAL · Invited

Abstract

Radiotherapy is the current standard of care for more than 50% of all cancer patients. Improvements in radiotherapy technology have increased tumor targeting and normal tissue sparing. Recently, the beneficial differential effects on tumors versus normal tissues using the delivery of single, high radiation doses of >10 Gy at extremely high dose rates, has received increasing attention and was termed the FLASH effect. However, radiobiological research into radiobiological effectiveness of ultra-high dose rate protons has been limited by the restricted access to proton facilities for experiments. As such, there is much speculation regarding the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms at play for irradiations with FLASH proton dose rates. We present the first radiobiological results using our new experimental platform to deliver petawatt laser-driven (LD) proton pulses with clinically relevant doses ranging from 5 to 25 Gy at ultra-high instantaneous dose rates of 107 Gy/s with 2 MeV energy at 0.2 Hz repetition rate to prostate cell monolayers grown over a 1 cm diameter field. Dose-dependent cell survival measurements of human normal and tumor prostate cells exposed to either LD protons or conventional X-rays showed significantly higher normal cell survival after LD proton irradiation for total doses >10 Gy. The tumor cells in contrast showed enhanced killing after exposure. These results, in combination with the low-cost and small-footprint nature of LD proton sources, provide evidence to demonstrate the capabilities of this new platform to elucidate the mechanism and optimal conditions of ultra-high dose rate proton therapy.

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Publication: - J. Bin et al.: Absolute calibration of GafChromic film for very high flux laser driven ion beams. Review of Scientific Instruments 90, 053301 (2019).<br>- S. Steinke et al.: Acceleration of high charge ion beams with achromatic divergence by petawatt laser pulses. Physical Review Accelerators and Beams 23(2), 021302 (2020).<br>- J. Bin, L. Obst-Huebl et al.: The BELLA PW laser proton beamline: a new platform for ultra-high dose rate radiobiological research. Submitted to Scientific Reports.<br>- J. Bin et al.: Single shot source size measurement of laser driven proton beams with active plasma lens. In preparation.<br>- L. Geulig et al.: Using an integrating current transformer as a non-invasive laser-driven ion beam charge diagnostic. In preparation.

Presenters

  • Lieselotte Obst-Huebl

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Authors

  • Lieselotte Obst-Huebl

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Jianhui Bin

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Jian-Hua Mao

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Kei Nakamura

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Laura Geulig

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Hang Chang

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Qing Ji

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Li He

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Jared De Chant

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Anthony J Gonsalves

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Stepan S Bulanov

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Zachary Kober

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Carl B Schroeder

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Cameron R Geddes

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Blake Simmons

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Thomas Schenkel

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Eleanor A Blakely

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Antoine M Snijders

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Sven Steinke

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Eric H Esarey

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory