ESTRO Annual Report 2020

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2. European Particle Therapy Network (EPTN)

EPTN, a task force of ESTRO, was created to promote clinical and research collaboration between the members of European particle therapy (PT) centres, whose numbers are increasing rapidly, and to ensure that PT became integrated into the overall radiation oncology community. The 6 th EPTN workshop took place virtually on 23 October 2020. The workshop was attended by 55 participants. Since the last EPTN annual meeting, three new centres have joined the network: the Zuid-Oost Nederland Protonen Therapie Centrum (ZON- PTC, the South-East Netherlands Proton Therapy Centre), in Maastricht, The Netherlands; the Particle Therapy Interuniversity Centre Leuven (ParticLE), Belgium; and a new Rutherford Cancer Centre, UK. Report fromEuropeanCommissiondirectorate- general on health and food safety (DG Santé) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) On 21 October 2020, there was a virtual meeting of the sub-group on proton therapy of the European Commission (EC) steering group on health promotion, disease prevention andmanagement of non-communicable diseases, which is co- chaired by DG SANTE and the EIB. The mandate of the sub-group is to examine the current state of play of availability and use of proton therapy centres across the European Union (EU) and to identify options through which willing member states can cooperate sustainably to improve information exchange and avoid duplication of effort. The meeting was attended by approximately 40 participants who represented member states’ health authorities, the EPTN, the EIB and DG SANTE. A report on this meeting is available here.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2020 ACTIVITIES OF THE EPTN WORKING PARTIES WP1: Clinical The first objective of WP1was to assess the content of the prospective data registration programmes for the most important indications for proton therapy. The current status is that this has been completed for cancers of the central nervous system, head and neck, breast, oesophagus, lung and prostate. For paediatric patients, EPTN will eventually follow the recommendations of the project entitled health effects of cardiac fluoroscopy and modern radiotherapy in paediatrics (HARMONIC). A recent survey among EPTN members showed that they were broadly committed to the collection of data that were integrated in the E2-RADIatE project (ParticleCare), which is coordinated by EORTC. WP2: Dose assessment, quality assurance, dummy runs, technology inventory As of October 2020, 28 centres in 12 different countries were contributing to WP2. A dedicated quality assurance (QA) workshop was organised in autumn 2019. The event was hosted by the Holland Particle Therapy Center (HollandPTC) in Delft, The Netherlands. It was a two-day gathering (23-24 October) with the scope to share and compare experiences of QA procedures as currently carried out at different European centres. In the framework of WP2 activities, two projects were submitted in 2019 to the infrastructure in proton international research (INSPIRE) programme and were approved to receive support through the transnational access (TNA) infrastructure. WP3: Education The working group decided to develop site- specific workshops to meet the increasing need for education and training in the field of particle therapy. These will be two-day events that will be hosted by institutions that have solid clinical experience of treating a specific disease site with protons.

Science & Dissemination

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