Protons against cancer: New research beamline for innovative radiotherapies
Prof. Dr Judith Reindl and PhD student Aikaterini Rousseti (from left to right) from the University of the Bundeswehr Munich present the experimental station for biological samples which is installed at the new Minibee beamline at HZB. © Kevin Fuchs / HZB
Magnetic quadrupoles focus the proton beam in front of the experiment platform. © Kevin Fuchs / HZB
Together with the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, the HZB has set up a new beamline for preclinical research. It will enable experiments on biological samples on innovative radiation therapies with protons.
The proton accelerator at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has been used for about 25 years to combat certain types of eye tumours. So far, over 4800 people have benefited from proton eye tumour therapy, which is carried out in collaboration with Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Now, the proton accelerator at HZB also offers the option of conducting preclinical research: A mini-beamline for preclinical experiments (Minibee) has been set up for this purpose together with the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich. The HZB's Proton Therapy Department has built the beam guidance and control system for the minibeams. The University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, with Prof. Judith Reindl from the Institute of Applied Physics and Measurement Technology and the Section of Biomedical Radiation Physics, installed a platform for image-guided irradiation of biological samples. This will enable joint experiments on radiobiology and innovative radiation therapy in the future.
‘At Minibee, we can use medical research to investigate how changes in parameters and settings of the proton beam affect the treatment,’ says Judith Reindl. Among other things, Minibee is designed to generate ultrashort proton flashes (FLASH therapy) or needle-fine radiation (beamlets). ‘Our aim is to develop new methods that effectively destroy tumours while providing even better protection for healthy tissue,’ says Prof. Dr. Andrea Denker, head of the Department of Proton Therapy at HZB.
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- Ultrafast demagnetisation - Thinner iron, stronger effectThe thinner an iron film, the more easily it can be demagnetised by a laser pulse. Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen, working with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and other partners, have discovered why: the key lies in the magnetic order at the material's interfaces. In the long term, these findings could contribute to the development of new technologies for magnetic data storage. The results have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Science.
- Blind spot for the arrangement of atomsArtificial intelligence is increasingly being used to predict the properties of new materials. A research team from Jena and the United States now shows in a study published in the journal Nature Computational Science that when language models are used for this purpose, they reliably identify which types of atoms a material contains. However, they make insufficient use of information about how those atoms are arranged in space. Neither larger models nor additional training data resolve this weakness. For material properties that depend strongly on structure, AI models specifically designed to process spatial relationships are therefore the more reliable choice. (DOI: 10.1038/s43588-026-01045-2)