ITAR Quest to increase Global Access to Cancer Treatments

Developing new radiotherapy technologies to give more cancer patients in Sub-Saharan Africa access to treatment is the aim behind a new project supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The efforts of international experts in accelerator design, medical physics and oncology, alongside IT experts and health system researchers, will be used to design and develop a new type of radiotherapy machine that is affordable and robust enough to be used in more challenging environments reliably and particularly to meet the needs of African hospitals, where the shortage of radiotherapy treatment is acute.

By 2040, it is predicted there will be 27.5 million new cancer cases worldwide each year, leading to more than 13 million deaths. Up to 70% of these will occur in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Phase 1 of the project, being led by the Universities of Lancaster and Oxford, will define the persistent shortfalls in basic infrastructure, equipment and specialist workforce, that are preventing effective radiotherapy delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa and develop new solutions leading to a detailed specification and conceptual design. The project, known as ITAR (Innovative Technologies towards building Affordable and equitable global Radiotherapy capacity), will then progress to a prototype development phase of a medical linear accelerator for radiotherapy, at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory.

The University of Lancaster’s Professor Graeme Burt, also of the Cockcroft Institute, is leading the first phase: “Current radiotherapy machines are optimised for use in western countries. The ITAR project aims to design specifically for use in Africa making it far more tolerant to the local environment, which will greatly increase the capacity for more lives to be saved.”

STFC’s Professor Deepa Angal-Kalinin, also of the Cockcroft Institute and University of Manchester, will lead the accelerator design. She said: “I am keen to apply the knowledge and expertise at Daresbury Laboratory to develop a novel medical linear accelerator design in this phase of the project which will prepare us to build a prototype to test our new ideas.”

The ITAR project is a critical part of a larger international project that includes the International Cancer Expert Corps (ICEC), CERN, STFC (Daresbury Laboratory), led by Lancaster and Oxford Universities and involving other international research partners and hospitals.