International Open Laboratory (IOL)
at the National Institute for Radiological Sciences (NIRS)

Radiation Quality Research Unit

German-Japan partnership for new therapies using heavy ions

GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung has entered into an unprecedented partnership with the National Institute for Radiological Sciences (NIRS) in Japan that will allow exchange of researchers and access to heavy ion beams for biomedical research in the coming 3 years.

The "Radiation Quality" unit is the 4^th IOL funded by NIRS, the others being in collaboration with Columbia University (NY, USA), Colorado State University (CO, USA), University of Sussex (UK), and Karolinska Institute (Sweden). The co-operation is funded by a Japanese grant of 50 million ¥ for exchange of researchers and beamtime at the HIMAC medical accelerator.

Research of the Radiation Quality Unit will focus on carbon ion therapy to treat multiple cancers with different oxygen concentrations, toward the development of an "adaptive treatment plan" which fully takes into account tumor hypoxia.

IOL-NIRS plan (restricted access)

GSI Annual Report 2010 on IOL

IOL regulations: Regulations 1, Regulations 2 (pdf)

Kick-off meeting (TU Darmstadt, 5.9.2011)

Annual IOL Seminar (NIRS, Chiba, 21.11.2011)

Link to the Japanese IOL webpage