In the field of radiation oncology there is currently tremendous excitement about the delivery of radiation at much higher dose rates than typically used clinically.
The reason for this is the possibility of mitigating radiation-induced normal tissue injury. In the 1960s and ‘70s, pre-clinical experiments showed that non-cancerous cells and tissues were protected from cell death when given ultra-high dose rates of radiation compared to conventional dose rates.
The term “FLASH irradiation” was coined by the Vozenin and Favaudon groups in 2014, who in a seminal paper in 2014 showed that FLASH radiation of mice led to protection of the lung from fibrosis when compared to standard dose-rate (Fauvadon V et al, Sci Transl Med 2014).
