Best Life: Beating late stage cancers

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Radiation is one of the key treatments in the fight against all forms of cancer.

More than 50% of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy – that means that this year, more than 650,000 people in the U.S. will receive radiation to try and wipe out their disease.

Now, a new radiation therapy is turning cancer against itself.

This year, 230,000 men and women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, about 400,000 will be diagnosed with bone cancer.

“Metastatic lung or bone disease, we’re usually talking about stage four cancer at that point,” said Terrence Williams, MD, a radiation oncologist at City of Hope.

For late-stage malignant bone and lung cancers, survival is measured in months, not years. But now, a new type of targeted radiotherapy is turning cancer cells against themselves.

“One therapeutic option that is emerging now is something called biology-guided radiation therapy,” said Dr. Williams.

Radiation oncologists at the City of Hope are some of the first to use the Reflection X1 Linear Accelerator – it’s the world’s first real-time linear accelerator to help visualize the cancer.

“Real-time PET-guided radiation therapy is utilizing the positron emission that comes from the tumor to triangulate where the tumor is in the body and immediately target radiation back to the tumor,” said Dr. Williams.

The Reflection X1 can see precisely where to aim the beams of radiation, even when the tumor is moving.

This decreases the risk of damaging healthy cells during radiation, giving doctors and their patients another tool to help track down cancer and destroy it.

Earlier this year, the Reflexion received clearance from the FDA to treat primary or metastatic lung and bone cancer tumors.

Contributors to this news report include: Marsha Lewis, Producer; Matt Goldschmidt, Videographer; Roque Correa, Editor.

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