Prime Highlights
- Varian’s FAST-02 trial shows proton Flash therapy safely treats painful thoracic bone metastases, with 75% of participants reporting complete pain relief at three months.
- The therapy delivers radiation in under a second and showed no serious side effects, including no heart or lung damage despite treating tumours near those organs.
Key Facts
- The trial enrolled 10 adult patients at Cincinnati Children’s/University of Cincinnati Proton Therapy Center, each receiving a single high-dose treatment.
- Varian plans larger, multi-centre trials to further study Flash therapy’s potential across a wider range of cancers.
Background
Varian, the cancer-care arm of Siemens Healthineers, has released results from its FAST-02 clinical trial, examining how proton Flash therapy affects painful bone metastases in the chest area of cancer patients.
The study builds on earlier trial FAST-01, which showed that proton Flash therapy could be safely delivered to patients with bone metastases in the arms and legs. FAST-02 extends that work to metastases in the ribs, collarbone, shoulder blade and breastbone.
Flash therapy delivers radiation in under a second, roughly 100 times faster than standard radiation treatment, and earlier lab studies suggest it may limit damage to healthy tissue while still controlling tumours effectively.
Conducted at the Cincinnati Children’s/University of Cincinnati Proton Therapy Center, the trial was led by Dr. John Perentesis, director of the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, along with Dr. Emily Daugherty of the University of Cincinnati Cancer Center. Ten adult patients took part, each receiving a single high-dose treatment delivered in under a second.
Among participants tracked at three months, six out of eight reported complete pain relief, while two reported partial relief. Daugherty said the trial’s significance lies in treating tumours near the lungs, heart and spinal cord, adding that no serious side effects or heart and lung damage were observed.
Ricky Sharma, Varian’s head of clinical strategy, said the next step involves larger, multi-centre trials covering a broader range of cancers to better understand the treatment’s potential impact in everyday clinical use.
