# Carbon Ion Therapy: A Modern Review of an Emerging Technology

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-malouff-front-oncol/  
OnCo record `paper-malouff-front-oncol` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by two technology pages, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 32117737 and published in Frontiers in oncology; the citing pages link this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Radiation therapy is one of the most widely used therapies for malignancies. The therapeutic use of heavy ions, such as carbon, has gained significant interest due to advantageous physical and radiobiologic properties compared to photon based therapy. By taking advantage of these unique properties, carbon ion radiotherapy may allow dose escalation to tumors while reducing radiation dose to adjacent normal tissues. There are currently 13 centers treating with carbon ion radiotherapy, with many of these centers publishing promising safety and efficacy data from the first cohorts of patients treated. To date, carbon ion radiotherapy has been studied for almost every type of malignancy, including intracranial malignancies, head and neck malignancies, primary and metastatic lung cancers, tumors of the gastrointestinal tract, prostate and genitourinary cancers, sarcomas, cutaneous malignancies, breast cancer, gynecologic malignancies, and pediatric cancers. Additionally, carbon ion radiotherapy has been studied extensively in the setting of recurrent disease. We aim to provide a comprehensive review of the studies of each of these disease sites, with a focus on the current trials using carbon ion radiotherapy.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 32117737 (DOI 10.3389/fonc.2020.00082). Matched by DOI alone: two technology pages cite this DOI among their external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Frontiers in oncology
- Year: 2020
- DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2020.00082
- Authors: Malouff TD, Mahajan A, Krishnan S, et al.
- What it means: Two technology pages on OnCo cite this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing pages listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Front Oncol 2020: https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2020.00082
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32117737/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/32117737

## Connected records

- technologies: [Carbon-ion synchrotrons and facilities](https://onco.cc/technologies/carbon-ion-synchrotrons/), [Carbon-ion therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/carbon-ion/)

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