Speaker
Description
Increasing the population's access to new advanced cancer treatment and diagnosis methods is of pivotal importance. The ELI-NP infrastructure has embarked on this research path through the Dr. LASER project. The project is part of the National Health Program, pursuing innovative approaches in healthcare research, and it is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Romanian Government. The project aims to develop medical applications that employ high-power lasers, such as treatment using heavy-ion hadron therapy assisted by phase-contrast X-ray imaging, as well as diagnosis and treatment using medical radioisotopes. The research on cancer treatment will mainly focus on laser-driven acceleration of carbon ions with the 10 PW laser system of ELI-NP and radiobiology experiments in-vitro and in-vivo, towards hadrontherapy. Therefore, this presentation will illustrate the state-of-the-art of the laser-driven radiobiology with carbon ions, describe the main objectives of the Dr. LASER project, and discuss the progress made by ELI-NP in this research direction.