Author: Silvia Nicolai

The Nuclear Physics Board of the European Physical Society has awarded the 2020 IBA-Europhysics Prize to Professor Thomas Haberer, scientific and technical director of the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center at the Heidelberg University Hospital, Germany.

The prize was motivated by Prof. Haberer’s “outstanding scientific discoveries and innovative technological breakthroughs in the use of high energy accelerators and heavy ion beams for the Heavy Ion Cancer therapy”.

Prof. Haberer has devoted his scientific career to the interdisciplinary field of ion-beam tumor therapy. In particular, he introduced a crucial innovation in particle therapy: the raster-scan technique. It consists of a method to deliver the dose that focuses the relativistic ion beams down to pencil size, and scans them over the volume of the tumor. This method allows the full clinical exploitation of the advantageous properties of ion beams, as the highly efficient stopping ions are guided into the target volume only, thus sparing healthy tissue and organs close to the tumor. In the initial phases of Prof. Haberer’s research, raster-scanned carbon beams were produced at the Germany's Heavy Ion Research Center, GSI, to treat, with excellent clinical outcomes, more than 400 patients predominantly suffering from tumors at the base of the skull. Afterwards, the first hospital-based ion-beam therapy center at the Heidelberg University Hospital (Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center, HIT) was established, following the specifications of Dr. Haberer and the principles of the raster-scan method. Since 2009, roughly 6000 patients have been treated at HIT’s fix beam lines, using its world-unique gantry with proton and carbon pencil beams. HIT’s research infrastructure allows for the constant development of the technology for ion-beam treatments. In particular, it recently saw the introduction of novel treatment protocols based on helium and oxygen beams. Today the beam scanning technology is widely adopted in the field of particle therapy.

The award ceremony of the 2020 IBA prize is planned to take place during the Applied Nuclear Physics Conference (Prague, September 12-17, 2021). 

Thomas Haberer in-front of an ion source at HIT - Image: T. Haberer