Proton minibeam radiation therapy: a promising therapeutic approach for radioresistant tumors

Proton minibeam radiation therapy (pMBRT) is a novel cancer therapy approach based on a high spatial dose modulation. pMBRT activates distinct radiobiological mechanisms and it has been shown to lead in small animal experiments to a significant increase in normal tissue dose tolerances while maintaining or enhancing tumor control effectiveness as compared with conventional radiotherapy. Although recently proposed, the biological observations collected thus far challenge the classical paradigm in RT and encourage the preparation of phase I clinical trials. (author)