Alberta gets new weapons in cancer fight

Greg Basky

Later this year Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute will unveil a new centre and an arsenal of new weapons in the war on cancer, with the latter including equipment that “sculpts” radiation to the precise shape of a tumour.

This helical tomotherapy unit will deliver precise radiation treatments from multiple positions and angles and will let doctors use higher dosages because it significantly reduces the amount of radiation hitting healthy tissue adjacent to tumours. Because the unit simultaneously performs a CT scan during treatment, it can make automatic, on-the-fly adjustments in response to any movement by the patient, further reducing the risk of damage to noncancerous areas.

“It's a simple process, really,” says Dr. Gino Fallone, codirector of the new centre. “You have a target you're trying to hit but you don't want to hit anything else. Now we will be able, with confidence, to increase the dosage we can use because we'll be more in control of where it's going. We're limited now because of the risk of side effects and damage to healthy tissue.”

The $21-million tab for the new Centre for Biological Imaging and Adaptive Radiotherapy and its highly specialized equipment will be shared by the federal and provincial governments and the Alberta Cancer Foundation.

Slated to be operating by October, the centre will also be home to Western Canada's first (and Canada's third) whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) scanner and the cyclotron that produces the short-life radioisotopes used in PET imaging.

Fallone says that by bringing all the technology together under one roof, staff hope to harness “the full curing potential from radiation.”