In recent years, several studies have indicated that ultra-high dose rates might result in reduced toxicities to healthy tissues while keeping at least the same tumor control as in the case of treatments with standard dose rate levels (so-called FLASH effect). The FLASH effect has become interesting also for the proton therapy community. This talk will report on the commissioning of the former treatment unit Gantry 1 at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland for FLASH preclinical studies. We realized a proton FLASH irradiation setup able to investigate continuously a wide dose rate spectrum, from 1 to 9000 Gy/s in single spot irradiation as well as in the pencil beam scanning mode. Teaming with our partners from the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and Varian Medical Systems, we have launched an experimental FLASH program and conducted first irradiations of zebrafish embryos.

Dr. Nesteruk is a Research Fellow in Paganetti’s lab at the MGH and Harvard Medical School. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland in 2017. Since 2017 he has been working on technology development and dose delivery in proton therapy. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Proton Therapy of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, he led research activities to establish an experimental FLASH program on one of the PSI’s gantries. Currently, he is a PI of the project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation to investigate different imaging modalities for online adaptive proton therapy.