• Question: how does radio therepy help cancer

    Asked by jess_shannon to RobB on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Rob Brass

      Rob Brass answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      First of all, cancer is just a group of rapidly dividing cells. It happens when the DNA of cells gets damaged (through UV radiation from the sun, smoking, etc.) but instead of killing the cell it just causes it to go a bit haywire!

      So radiotherapy works by delivering radiation to a tumour while trying not to give too much radiation to the healthy organs and tissue around it.

      The radiation interacts in the body and kills cells by damaging the DNA of that cell. So by aiming the beam at the tumour and avoiding healthy bits we can make sure we kill a lot more tumour cells than healthy cells!

      Also, we tend to deliver most radiotherapy in small daily treatments (called fractions) over several weeks, by doing this it gives the healthy cells time to recover. The tumour cells recover more slowly as they aren’t proper functioning cells.

      Hope that helps?

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