REPORT – Faster, stronger: very high energy electrons produced by a compact and innovative particle accelerator will be used to treat resistant tumours.
Special envoy to Geneva
The first impression is that of a certain disorder. In the hangar in the Geneva region, a number of electric wires run and seem to get tangled along a linear structure of 40 meters, punctuated by boxes and tubes covered with aluminum. Obviously, this should not be relied upon: the Clear (Cern Linear Electron Accelerator for Research) facility, located on the particle accelerator campus of Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research), unique in its kind, is state-of-the-art technology at the service of scientific and medical innovation.
It is mobilized, among other things, to advance Flash technology, which holds great hope in the treatment of cancers resistant to conventional therapies. “The idea is to treat with very rapid radiotherapy, with a beam of very high energy electrons”, explains Wilfrid Farabolini, physicist, head of operations at Clear. The particle accelerator he…
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