Although it was invented over one hundred years ago, radiation therapy is still the most prescribed treatment for cancer.
Despite its wide-spread use, radiation therapy has a significant limiting factor. Tumor “hypoxia” (oxygen-deprivation) deep within tumor tissue limits radiation’s tumor-killing effectiveness.
Currently, over 750,000 people (about 65% of all cancer patients) receive radiation therapy annually in the US, with another 1.1 million in the rest of the world (ROW).
Overall, patients receive over 25 million radiation therapy treatments of cancerous tumors at about 2,000 US hospitals and freestanding radiation therapy centers annually.