Accelerators for Society

A former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) chemist is attempting to commercialize an accelerator-based measurement technology, developed at the lab, that predicts whether some cancerous tumors will respond to a widely used chemotherapy agent. If the test is approved for use, patients who won’t respond to the drug would be spared from having to endure the toxic side effects and could pursue other therapies.

The technology employs radiocarbon tracing using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to determine if the chemotherapy agent carboplatin will be effective in treating individuals with bladder and lung cancer. Carboplatin is effective in nearly two-thirds of patients with those cancers, but there is no currently approved method for determining a priori who will and will not respond. Read more >>