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01.10.2025


The European Partnership for Radiation Protection Research, PIANOFORTE, has awarded almost €1 million to the PRESTO project (PRoton therapy Enhancement by Spatially fractionated Treatment Optimization), coordinated by Professor Niels Bassler at the Danish Centre for Particle Therapy (DCPT), Aarhus University.

The PRESTO project  was confirmed yesterday by PIANOFORTE General Assembly as one of the winning projects of the 3rd Open Call. It aims to advance proton minibeam therapy by testing the safety of spatially fractionated proton therapy, developing a treatment planning system, and creating reliable models to predict the risk of side effects in healthy tissue.

One of the main objectives is to prepare for future clinical trials using pMBRT, where a specially designed collimator segments the proton beam into multiple parallel minibeams. This approach has shown promise in reducing side effects while maintaining tumour control.

The PRESTO consortium brings together leading research centres and universities across Europe, including the University Hospital Osijek (Croatia), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg and GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung Darmstadt (Germany), Erasmus MC Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Fondazione Bruno Kessler and University of Trento (Italy), National Physical Laboratory – NPL (UK), and RaySearch Laboratories AB (Sweden). The project is coordinated by the Danish Centre for Particle Therapy (DCPT) at Aarhus University.

The total project budget is nearly €1.5 million, of which nearly €1 million comes from the EU through PIANOFORTE.

“We are thrilled to receive this grant and the recognition from the assessment committee,” says Professor Niels Bassler. “With this international team we can expand our quantification work to develop predictive models and take the next steps toward clinical translation of proton minibeam therapy, with the aim of making radiotherapy both safer and more effective for patients.”

More information about winning projects at https://pianoforte-partnership.eu/news/new-research-projects-selected-within-open-call-3