UPMC CancerCenter First in World to Treat Patient With New Cyberknife MLC That Shapes Radiation to Tumor, Decreases Treatment Time

PITTSBURGH, March 2, 2015 – UPMC CancerCenter last week became the first center in the world to treat a patient with the CyberKnife M6 System’s new multileaf collimator, which enables precise shaping of radiation beams to any irregularly shaped tumor, sparing healthy surrounding tissues and reducing the time patients must undergo treatments. 

The CyberKnife M6 System with the InCise Multileaf Collimator (MLC) was used for the first time on Feb. 26 on a 56-year-old western Pennsylvania woman being treated for a benign brain tumor. UPMC CancerCenter was one of the InCise MLC evaluation sites working in collaboration with Accuray, the device’s manufacturer. The patient’s treatment lasted 22 minutes, about half of the time treatment would have taken without the use of advanced software and novel technologies, said Dwight E. Heron, MD, FACRO, FACR, director of Radiation Services at UPMC CancerCenter, a partner with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

This new technology will be especially useful for tumors in the body that are hard to reach or tend to move, he said. The treatment was administered as a multidisciplinary effort between Steven Burton, MD, from the department of Radiation Oncology and Johnathan Engh, MD, from the department of Neurosurgery.

“Our patient was diagnosed with a brain meningioma and was a good candidate for the highly-focused treatment that can be delivered by the CyberKnife,” said Dr. Heron, who oversees the largest system in the U.S. accredited by the American College of Radiation Oncology. “With the addition of the MLC, we were able to precisely target the tumor and spare healthy tissue, and it took us significantly less time to do it. This real-world case is consistent with our InCise MLC technical evaluation experience and exceeded our expectations in its efficiency.”

The M6 Series delivers radiosurgery and stereotactic body radiation therapy, enabling precise, high-quality dose distributions to be administered to patients with extreme accuracy over a minimum number of treatments, reducing side effects and preserving patients' quality of life. The system is able to adjust and automatically stay on target in real-time, accounting for patient and tumor motion. CyberKnife is the only robotic radiosurgery system available today that delivers such high-precision treatments throughout the body.

“We congratulate Dr. Heron, Dr. Saiful Huq and their team on treating the first patient using the CyberKnife M6 System and InCise MLC,” said Joshua H. Levine, president and chief executive officer of Accuray. “With the addition of the MLC, clinicians can deliver the same precise radiosurgery treatments they have come to expect with the CyberKnife System for a wider range of tumor types, including larger and different kinds of tumors than were previously treated.”