Advanced Oncotherapy PLC (LON:AVO) shares gained on Tuesday after the firm revealed it has found a way to more accurately measure the energy of each proton pulse used in its proton therapy system.
The company said in a statement that its newly-developed time-of-flight (TOF) testing of beam energy control and adjustment has proved to be successful with real-time results demonstrating remarkably good agreement with computer simulations.
READ: Advanced Oncotherapy says development of LIGHT system on track
The accurate evaluation of the beam energy requires measurement of time differences to picosecond precision (a picosecond being the time it takes light to travel one-third of a millimetre).
“Proton therapy is a high precision patient treatment. In proton therapy, the beam energy determines the depth of dose deposition in the patient. Because of the protons stopping in the patient's body during treatment, we would like to know the proton beam energy at the instant it is delivered,” explained Jonathan Farr, the director of Medical Physics at Advanced Oncotherapy.
“The new Advanced Oncotherapy Time-of-Flight on-line energy measurement feature gives us the ability to do just that. I consider it to be a real advancement from previous and existing systems on the market and a key building block in offering more versatile treatments with the potential for significantly improved clinical outcomes," he added.
Proton cancer therapy uses tech developed at .@CERN where mega contributor Prof Stephen Myers headed a team of scientists operating particle accelerators. Myers explains why his version of proton therapy is more effective and cheaper vs conventional treatment @AdvOnco
— Mega (@megaonline) May 25, 2018
In the meantime, the company continues to make significant progress with power testing of the side coupled drift tube linac integrated with the radiofrequency quadrupole and proton source. With much of the technological development now de-risked, the company is on target to have a system capable of treating superficial tumours by the end of the third quarter of this year.
In mid-morning trading, Advanced Onco shares were 5.8% higher at 55p.
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