Particle Physicists Join Battle against Cancer

1. Particle physicists spend most of their time exploring the fundamental properties of matter, often with accelerators that cost hundreds of millions of pounds. However, some are also engaged in an altogether more down-to earth activity – developing new technologies for medical applications. This activity has a long history of success, which is why about 130 physicists and healthcare professionals met in London recently to discuss “the future of medical imaging and radiotherapy”. A major theme at the meeting was how technology from particle physics could be used to diagnose and treat cancer.
2. “I don’t think there is any discipline that has gained so much from technology developed for applied physics as cancer diagnosis and therapy,” says Alan Horwich of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. “There is considerable potential for improving cancer cure rates over the next 10 to 15 years by the application of emerging imaging technologies to radiotherapy.”
3. According to Horwich, who is director of clinical research and development at the ICR, some 270000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in the UK every year, but less than half of the cases involving the most common types of cancer – breast, prostate, lung and bowel – are cured. He told on the meeting that the accuracy of radiotherapy needed to be improved because that would reduce the exposure of normal tissue to potentially harmful levels of radiation and allow higher doses to be directed at the tumour. He also said it is important to understand how to target the most resistant parts of a tumour.

4. Technology developed by particle physicists has already led to a number of breakthroughs in medical imaging, including positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed X-ray tomography (CT) and molecular imaging. In addition, linear accelerators are used to provide energetic photons for radiotherapy. The London meeting was organized by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) to explore new technologies that could be added to this list and discuss their possible commercialization.

Answer the question: What was the London meeting organized for?