A researcher at the University of Missouri School of Medicine has landed a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop technology that could make radiation treatment for cancer both faster and gentler on healthy tissue.
Rongxiao Zhang, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the MU School of Medicine, is leading the work on a system called TheryQ FLASHKNiFE, which delivers radiation doses to tumors at ultra-high speed. The idea is straightforward but the payoff could be significant: less time under the beam means less collateral damage to the tissue around a tumor.
“If you deliver the radiation dose much faster, it actually spares normal tissue,” Zhang said.
The grant money will go toward buying the equipment, which Zhang’s team expects to take three to six months, followed by up to a year of installing and commissioning the system. From there, the path to helping patients is still a long one: researchers are eyeing three to four years before clinical trials could begin, pending federal investigational device approval, and roughly five years before the technology could see FDA clearance.
Preclinical studies so far suggest the faster dosing can cut tissue damage, though researchers say they don’t yet fully understand the biological mechanism behind why it works. That’s part of what the NIH funding will help Zhang’s team dig into.
It’s early-stage science, and years from a treatment room — but it’s the kind of federal investment that keeps Columbia’s role in cancer research growing, right up the road from Rocheport.
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