On American time March 18, 2017, the 2017 Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology was closed at San Francisco in the United States. In the symposium, the proton therapy attracted widespread attention again for its excellent efficacy in the treatment of recurrent lung cancer.

The treatment of recurrent lung cancer is a challenge for both the physician and the patient. Since the patients with recurrent lung cancer are not commonly applicable for surgical treatment and the effect of radiation accumulation on the vital tissues (such as heart, healthy lung tissue, esophagus) around the tumors limits the application of definitive radiotherapy in the patients with recurrent lung cancer who had received radiation therapy before, the palliative treatment becomes the common therapy for the patients with recurrent lung cancer mainly to reduce pain and relieve symptoms.

Previous studies have demonstrated that the proton therapy can be used in the secondary radiotherapy for recurrent tumor due to its Bragg peak advantage. In this symposium, Prof. Zhang Yujiao as the Senior Author and Dr. Jennifer Ho as the First Author in their paper titled Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy Secondary Radiotherapy of Thoracic Tumors demonstrate that Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy (IMPT) is safe and effective in the treatment of patients with recurrent lung cancer by extending the survival and significantly reducing therapy-related toxicity. It is also an IMPT secondary radiotherapy of thoracic tumors with the largest sample size until now.

“Treating patients with prior thoracic radiotherapy is a common situation clinicians will encounter. How the make the patient receive sufficient exposure dose to remove new tumors while causing no serious harm to the healthy tissues of the patient is really a challenge for clinicians.” Jennifer Ho, the First Author of the study and resident physician and radiation oncologist of MD Anderson Cancer Center, said, “Our study for the first time demonstrate the safety and efficacy of IMPT in the treatment of these patients and improve the local control rate under no additional serious toxic reactions. ”

“In the past, 20%-30% of patients would have medium, serious or even fatal toxic or adverse reactions after secondary radiotherapy. We know using IMPT technique can obtain more specific regime and provide more protection on healthy tissues, but we’re not sure whether this advantage of IMPT can transfer to a better clinical efficacy.” Zhang Yujiao, the professor of radiation oncology from MD Anderson Cancer Center and Senior Author of the study, said, “Our findings demonstrate that using IMPT technique (providing secondary radiotherapy to the patients with recurrent lung cancer) can achieve higher control rate and survival rate with little toxicity compared with other radiotherapies. This indicates the IMOT is an ideal way to treat patients with recurrent thoracic tumors. ”