Mark Oldham, PhD, and co-investigators Scott Floyd, MD, PhD; Zach Reitman, MD, PhD; and Ying Wu, PhD, BS, have been awarded a Spring 2023 Duke Cancer Institute pilot award for the application "Brain tumor effects of a new and unique FLASH radiation therapy capability at Duke in collaboration with Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL)." Their project explores ultra high dose rate radiation therapy, called FLASH-RT, which has demonstrated ability to reduce normal brain toxicity while providing equivalent tumor control.
The team will use a unique Duke resource, the High Intensity Gamma Source (HIGS) part of TUNL, which will be run in a customized mode capable of delivering a high-energy electron beam with intra-pulse FLASH dose rate of up to 100 MGy/second. They will test the HIGS-FLASH beam in unique hybrid brain tumor models and an autochthonous model of pediatric brain cancer. The Duke FLASH team includes laboratory analyst Anna Price and medical physics students Markus Sprenger and Tyler Kay.