Boon-Keng Kevin Teo
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Radiation given at ultra-high dose rate — delivering an entire treatment in a fraction of a second, known as FLASH — appears to spare healthy tissue while killing tumors as effectively as conventional radiotherapy. Among radiation types, protons are the only clinically available option that could reach deep-seated tumors under FLASH conditions.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Physics
- Topics
FLASH radiotherapy
proton therapy
particle therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Develop density optimization algorithms that determine the internal, voxel-wise density distribution a range modulator needs in order to spread a mono-energetic proton beam into the desired mix of energies.
- Fabricate heterogeneous-density range modulators using PixelPrint 3D printing, which varies the filament-to-air ratio voxel by voxel, and experimentally validate how local density and stopping power shape the proton beam's energy degradation.
- Test the hypothesis that a printed modulator degrades beam energy across the transverse plane of the particle beam according to local material density, enabling complex modulation beyond binary solid-or-air ridge filter designs.
- Design patient-specific modulators for proton FLASH therapy treatment plans, as well as universal range modulators, and characterize their structural robustness and modular assembly.
More about the research
The practical obstacle is hardware. Clinical proton machines normally build up a treatment by switching the beam energy layer by layer, pausing between layers, which is far too slow for FLASH. The workaround is a beam modulation device: a block of material of varying thickness that a single high-energy proton beam passes through, emerging as a mix of energies that covers the tumor depth all at once. The standard device, a ridge filter, is a set of uniform-density spikes of different heights, and it is limited in both structural stability and the range of modulation it can produce.
Why it matters
If ultra-high dose rate proton treatment can be delivered on existing clinical cyclotrons and synchrocyclotrons, patients with deep-seated tumors could receive radiation with reduced damage to surrounding healthy tissue. Flexible, patient-specific range modulators would be a concrete step toward running the preclinical studies and clinical trials needed to establish FLASH proton therapy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rongxiao Zhang
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Build beam models for FLASH-capable linear accelerators, the machines that produce the radiation, so planning software can accurately predict the dose that ultra-high dose rate electron beams deliver.
Sally Amundson
Columbia University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether MIIST305, a drug that protects the gut from x-ray damage, also improves survival and reduces gut injury in rats exposed to nuclear-device-spectrum neutrons or ultra-high dose rate radiation.
Xiaofeng Yang
Emory University, GA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and refine a deep learning method that reconstructs real-time on-board volumetric images from very few two-dimensional projections for direct, markerless three-dimensional lung tumor tracking.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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