Radiation therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses beams of intense energy to kill cancer cells. Specifically, radiation therapy most often uses X-rays, but protons or other types of energy also can be used.

In fact, the term “radiation therapy” most often refers to external beam radiation therapy. During this type of radiation, the high-energy beams come from a machine outside of the patient’s body that aims the beams at a precise point on the body.

Conversely, during a different type of radiation treatment called brachytherapy, radiation is placed inside the body.

Moreover, radiation therapy damages cells by destroying the genetic material that controls how cells grow and divide. Although both healthy and cancerous cells are damaged by radiation therapy, the goal of radiation therapy is to destroy as few normal, healthy cells as possible. Fortunately, normal cells can often repair much of the damage caused by radiation.

Radiation Therapy Procedure

Consequently, more than half of all people with cancer receive radiation therapy as part of their cancer treatment. Furthermore, doctors use radiation therapy to treat just about every type of cancer.

Additionally, radiation therapy is also useful in treating some noncancerous (benign) tumors.

How radiation therapy is used in patients with cancer

Your doctor may suggest radiation therapy as an option at different times during your cancer treatment and for different reasons, including:

  • First, as the only (primary) treatment for cancer
  • Second, before surgery, to shrink a cancerous tumor (neoadjuvant therapy)
  • Moreover, after surgery, to stop the growth of any remaining cancer cells (adjuvant therapy)
  • Furthermore, in combination with other treatments, such as chemotherapy, to destroy cancer cells
  • Finally, in advanced cancer to alleviate symptoms caused by the cancer

Types of Radiation Therapy

Following are the are two main types of radiation therapy, external beam and internal:

The type of radiation therapy that you may have depends on many factors, including:

  • Type of cancer
  • Size of the tumor
  • Tumor’s location in the body
  • How close the tumor is to normal tissues that are sensitive to radiation
  • General health and medical history
  • Whether you will have other types of  cancer treatment
  • Other factors, such as the age and other medical conditions

External Beam Radiation Therapy

External beam radiation therapy comes from a machine that aims radiation at your cancer. The machine is large and may be noisy. It does not touch you, but can move around you, sending radiation to a part of your body from many directions. External beam radiation therapy is a local treatment, which means it treats a specific part of your body. For example, if you have cancer in the lung, you will have radiation only to the chest, not to your whole body.

Internal Radiation Therapy

Internal radiation therapy is a treatment in which a source of radiation is put inside the body. The radiation source can be solid or liquid. Internal radiation therapy with a solid source is called brachytherapy. In this type of treatment, seeds, ribbons, or capsules that contain a radiation source are placed in your body, in or near the tumor. Like external beam radiation therapy, brachytherapy is a local treatment and treats only a specific part of your body. With brachytherapy, the radiation source in your body will give off radiation for a while.

Internal radiation therapy with a liquid source is called systemic therapy. Systemic means that the treatment travels in the blood to tissues throughout the body, seeking out and killing cancer cells. You receive systemic radiation therapy by swallowing, through a vein, IV or through an injection. With systemic radiation, the body fluids, such as urine, sweat, and saliva, will give off radiation for a while.

Biospecimens

biospecimens

Bay Biosciences is a global leader in providing researchers with high quality, clinical grade, fully characterized human tissue samples, bio-specimens, and human bio-fluid collections.

Moreover, human biospecimens are available including tumor tissue, serum, plasma and PBMC samples from most other therapeutic areas.

Furthermore, Bay Biosciences maintains and manages its own biorepository, the human tissue bank (biobank) consisting of thousands of diseased samples (specimens) and likewise normal healthy donors for controls. Additionally, available in all formats and types.

In fact, our biobank procures and stores fully consented, de-identified and institutional review boards (IRB) approved human tissue samples, human biofluids such as serum samples, plasma samples from various diseases and matched controls.

Also, all our human tissue collections, human biospecimens and human biofluids are provided with detailed, samples associated patient’s clinical data.

In fact, this critical patient’s clinical data includes information relating to their past and current disease, treatment history, lifestyle choices, biomarkers, and genetic information.

Additionally, researchers find the patient’s data associated with the human biospecimens extremely valuable and use it to help identify new effective treatments (drug discovery & development) in oncology, as well as in other therapeutic areas and diseases.

Bay Biosciences banks wide variety of human tissue samples and human biological samples, including fresh frozen human biospecimens cryogenically preserved at – 80°C.

For example fresh frozen tissue samples, tumor tissue samples, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE), tissue slides, with matching human bio-fluids, whole blood and blood-derived products such as human serum, human plasma and human PBMCs.

Bay Biosciences is a global leader in collecting and providing human tissue samples according to the specified requirements and customized, tailor-made collection protocols.

Please contact us anytime to discuss your special research projects and customized human tissue sample requirements.

Types of Biospecimens

Bay Biosciences provides human tissue samples (human specimens) and human biofluids from diseased and normal healthy donors which includes:

Moreover, we can also procure most human biospecimens and human biofluids, special collections and requests for human samples that are difficult to find. All our human tissue samples and human biofluids are procured through IRB-approved clinical protocols and procedures.

In addition to the standard processing protocols, Bay Biosciences can also provide human biofluids such as  human plasma, human serum, and human PBMCs bio-fluid samples using custom processing protocols; you buy donor-specific collections in higher volumes and specified sample aliquots from us.

Bay Biosciences also provides human biospecimens from normal healthy donors; volunteers, for controls and clinical research, Contact us Now.