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IMRT and IGRT shape the radiation beam to the tumour's outline from multiple angles and check the patient's position with a scan before every session, so surrounding organs receive less dose. Fewer, larger doses are now standard in breast and prostate cancer, but a low-dose bath still spreads across normal tissue.
Intensity-modulated and volumetric arc therapy shape the radiation dose using multi-leaf collimators that vary beam intensity from multiple angles around the patient, while image guidance with cone-beam CT verifies patient position before each fraction. Together they are the default for most curative radiotherapy, giving conformal dose to the tumour with fewer side effects. Hypofractionation, meaning fewer, larger doses, is now standard in breast and prostate cancer and saves patients many visits. The remaining drawbacks are the low-dose bath spread across normal tissue from many beam angles and the need for motion management in moving targets. Adaptive replanning and MR-guidance are the next step, adjusting the plan to daily anatomy. Photons are low-LET and have RBE 1 by definition. Hypofractionation with IMRT is an alpha/beta bet; choosing protons instead of IMRT is an LET/RBE bet. The simple version is radiation sculpted to the tumour and checked with imaging every day.
Multi-leaf collimators modulate beam intensity from many angles; cone-beam CT verifies position before each fraction.
Dependencies are what this technology cannot be delivered without: manufacturing steps, instruments, software, upstream methods. See its full chain on the map.
Amifostine (Ethyol) is an infusion given just before chemotherapy or radiotherapy to shield the kidneys from cisplatin and the salivary glands from radiation, reducing dry mouth after head and neck treatment.
The chemotherapy given with radiation to cure anal cancer without surgery, used as a bladder instillation after tumour resection, and since 2020-25 in gel form for upper-tract and recurrent bladder cancers.
NBTXR3 is Nanobiotix's radioenhancer: a single injection of hafnium oxide nanoparticles that makes ordinary radiotherapy hit harder inside the tumour. It carries a European CE mark for soft-tissue sarcoma and is in a phase 3 trial in head and neck cancer with Johnson and Johnson.
The only chemotherapy proven to extend life in glioblastoma, given during and after radiation. It works best when the tumour has switched off a repair gene called MGMT.
Together with NORPACT-1 this left the neoadjuvant question for resectable disease open: FOLFIRINOX before surgery is not proven superior to alternatives, and the comparison against upfront surgery with adjuvant modified FOLFIRINOX is what PREOPANC-3 and Alliance A021806 are running.
Patients with limited-stage small-cell lung cancer who complete chemoradiotherapy without progression should now be offered up to two years of durvalumab consolidation, which extends life by almost two years on average. This is the first survival improvement for limited-stage disease since twice-daily radiotherapy and prophylactic cranial irradiation, and small-cell lung cancer is no longer a disease where immunotherapy gives only marginal gains.
The survival gain turns the earlier progression-free survival result into a clear reason to offer pembrolizumab with and after chemoradiotherapy to women with node-positive or stage III-IVA cervical cancer. Because cervical cancer is concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, the benefit reaches most women only if pricing and access follow.
Women with locally advanced cervical cancer that is node-positive or stage III-IVA can be offered pembrolizumab alongside and after chemoradiotherapy to lower the chance of relapse. The result matters most in countries where cervical cancer is common but immunotherapy access is poorest, so its global impact depends on pricing and health-system capacity. It does not apply to early-stage disease treated with surgery or to lower-risk locally advanced disease without nodal involvement.
Stage III lung cancer is now treated by genotype as well as by stage: an EGFR mutation moves a patient from durvalumab consolidation to osimertinib consolidation. It is also the strongest hazard ratio in the lung cancer literature, which is a reason to read the overall survival data carefully when they arrive.
For men with low- or intermediate-risk prostate cancer, protons and modern IMRT give the same excellent quality of life and cancer control, so the choice can rest on access, cost and convenience rather than on an expected sparing of bowel or bladder. The result removes prostate cancer from the list of adult indications where a proton advantage was assumed but untested.
The current standard for unresectable stage III lung cancer, and the clearest evidence in the disease that consolidation immunotherapy converts responses into cures for some patients rather than merely delaying relapse.
The second total neoadjuvant therapy schedule to change practice, and the one that shows the advantage is partly deliverability: chemotherapy given before an operation is completed by far more patients than chemotherapy given after one.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"intensity-modulated radiotherapy" OR ABSTRACT:"intensity-modulated radiotherapy" OR TITLE:"image-guided radiotherapy" OR ABSTRACT:"image-guided radiotherapy" OR TITLE:"hypofractionated radiotherapy" OR ABSTRACT:"hypofractionated radiotherapy"). Results are unfiltered search hits about IMRT / IGRT (modern external beam), not a curated reading list.
Shares A Combination Therapy Including Anti-PD-1 Immunotherapy in MSS Rectal Cancer With Resectable Distal Metastasis, A Multicenter Single-arm P2 to Evaluate Safety and Efficacy of the Total Neoadjuvant Therapy for cT2 Rectal Cancer, A Phase II Single-Arm Study of High-Bioavailability Curcumin as Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy in Mid-to-Low Rectal Cancer: Integrated Clinical and Translational, Adaptive Radiotherapy for Safe Hypofractionation.
Shares INT-0116 (Macdonald trial), CATNON (EORTC 26053-22054), PATHOS, De-ESCALaTE HPV.
Shares Can we Save the Rectum by Watchful Waiting or TransAnal Surgery Following (Chemo)Radiotherapy Versus Total Mesorectal Excision for Early REctal Cancer?, NALIRIFOX Combined With PD-1 Sequential Radiotherapy Versus NALIRIFOX as Conversion Therapy of Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer, Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy and PD-1 Inhibitor for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer（CONTROL-01）, Neoadjuvant Therapy vs Standard Therapy in Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer.
Shares Carien L. Creutzberg, Induction chemotherapy → chemoradiation (locally advanced cervical cancer), Mary McCormack, Surgery against radiotherapy for basal cell carcinoma of the face.
Shares Modified Sandwich Therapeutic Regimen for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer, Neoadjuvant CAPOX With or Without Pucotenlimab Plus Selective Radiotherapy for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer, SIB-RT Combined With CAPOX and PD-1 for High-Risk Rectal Cancer, TNT of SCRT+CAPOX vs SCRT+CAPOXIRI for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer.
Shares Can we Save the Rectum by Watchful Waiting or TransAnal Surgery Following (Chemo)Radiotherapy Versus Total Mesorectal Excision for Early REctal Cancer?, Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy and PD-1 Inhibitor for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer（CONTROL-01）, Node-Sparing Short-Course Radiation Combined With Capecitabine and PD-1/CTLA-4 for MSS Early Rectal Cancer, Organ Preservation in Rectal AdenoCa Using Hypofractionated Pelvic RT(Hypo-OPRA).
Shares Adaptive Hypofractionated Radiotherapy for Locally Advanced NSCLC Based on Dynamic Enhanced MRI, Addition of Hypofractionated High Dose Radiation in Oligometastatic Disease, Addition of Thoracic Consolidation Radiotherapy to the Maintenance Immunotherapy for ES-SCLC (STONE-001), Adebrelimab Combined With Chemoradiotherapy in Patients With Large Bulky Stage III Unresectable Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.
Shares PATHOS, De-ESCALaTE HPV, ECOG-ACRIN E3311, Efficacy and Safety of CRT, Durvalumab and Surgery for SST.
Open-source projects that implement or serve this technology, from OnCo's own catalogue: licence and last activity as the repository reported them on the day of the fetch. Listing is not endorsement; check the licence before reuse and the validation before clinical use.
DKFZ's open MATLAB toolkit for radiotherapy treatment planning research: photons, protons, carbon ions, dose calculation and optimisation.
Radiotherapy research toolkit inside 3D Slicer: DICOM-RT import and export, dose comparison, contour analysis and beam visualisation.
Open-source software, hardware and data projects catalogued by a third party, the Open Medical Registry, that bear on this technology. Listing is not endorsement; check each project's own licence and validation before clinical use.
Develop dose prediction models for knowledge-based planning in radiotherapy
Opensource Python project for cancer radiation treatment planning [AAPM'23]
A community effort to develop an open standard library for Medical Physics in Python.
Online Radiation Therapy BED EQD2 comparision schemes and Reirradiation analysis based on Python and Streamlit
3D Slicer extension for Radiotherapy clinical re-irradiation analysis.
Statistical Toolkit for Analysis of Radiotherapy DICOM Data
From the Open Medical Registry (openmedical.sh), an MIT-licensed catalogue of open-source medicine. Blurbs are one line from each registry record; every project keeps its own licence.