DFG funds research training group on proton therapy at the University Alliance Ruhr

In future, young scientists in the Ruhr region will be able to complete their doctorates at the interface between physics, chemistry and medicine and research the promising field of proton therapy: The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved the establishment of Research Training Group 3043 “AMTEC-PRO” at TU Dortmund University and the University of Duisburg-Essen. It will fund the Research Training Group (RTG) from October 2025 for an initial period of five years with a total of around six million euros. Prof. Kevin Kröninger from the Faculty of Physics at TU Dortmund University is the spokesperson for the research training group.

Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiotherapy that is used to treat cancer. Protons, i.e. positively charged particles, are targeted at tumor cells. In contrast to X-rays, protons have the advantage that they release their energy very precisely in the tumor tissue, destroying it and largely sparing the surrounding healthy tissue.

In the first funding phase, a total of 24 doctoral students from the fields of chemistry, physics and engineering will conduct research into methods of this particle technology and machine learning in their doctoral projects. Among other things, they will work on developing new instruments to further improve the precision of proton therapy. They will also investigate radiation effects at various levels in order to kill tumor cells even more effectively and further reduce the undesirable effects of radiation.

“In the Research Training Group, we want to transfer our strong basic research into medical applications. In order for this technology transfer to succeed, experts from basic research and applied sciences as well as clinical application are represented there,” explains RTG spokesperson Prof. Kevin Kröninger from TU Dortmund University. The future doctoral supervisors come from the fields of chemistry, physics, medical physics, medicine, computer science and engineering.

The TU Dortmund University and the University of Duisburg-Essen are involved in AMTEC-PRO - the abbreviation stands for “Advanced Methods and Technologies for Proton Therapy” - as scientific partners. The West German Proton Therapy Center Essen (WPE) at Essen University Hospital is the central clinical facility of the research group. “With AMTEC-PRO, we can take an important step towards further developing precision radiation therapy with fast protons for the benefit of our cancer patients. The WPE provides the technical basis for this and also has extensive clinical experience with almost 5,000 patients treated. These are the ideal prerequisites for our forward-looking, interdisciplinary program,” says Professor Beate Timmermann, Medical Director of the WPE and site spokesperson for the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Faculty of Medicine.

AMTEC-PRO will benefit from the excellent research infrastructures of the entire University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr) and will also establish a cross-location UA Ruhr guest chair for particle science for the alliance of the three Ruhr universities. Relevant preliminary work for the new Research Training Group was carried out by the researchers involved in a UA Ruhr-wide project funded by the Mercator Research Center Ruhr (MERCUR) from 2020-2023 (“Precision Proton Therapy - Practical Physics and Chemistry at the Interface to Medicine”).

In the long term, AMTEC-PRO aims to create a sustainable link between basic scientific research, new technologies and modern medicine in the Ruhr region. Doctoral students will also benefit from the interdisciplinary nature of the research training group, which will open up career paths in science and industry.