• Posted May 6, 2025

Cancer Patient Avoided Side Effects With New Advance In Radiation Therapy

TUESDAY, May 6, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Tiffiney Beard expected a rough road ahead after her April 2024 diagnosis with a rare cancer of the salivary glands.

Tumors from adenoid cystic carcinoma target the body’s nerves, so fighting the cancer typically comes with a range of side effects — fatigue, jaw pain, difficulty eating or swallowing, loss of taste, headaches and memory issues.

In Beard’s case, the cancer had woven its way into the nerves leading to her brain, making matters even worse.

But Beard has remained free of side effects despite months of radiation therapy.

That’s because doctors treated Beard with an advanced form of radiation treatment called proton arc therapy, which delivers radiation precisely to a tumor in a more continuous, automated fashion.

“After having the tumor removed, which was about the size of a gumball, I had 33 proton therapy treatments in total and, amazingly, had no side effects and didn’t miss a day of work,” Beard, 46, of Redford, Mich., said in a news release. “You hear a lot of stories about radiation side effects, and I just wasn’t having any.”

Beard’s successful treatment is the focus of a case study on using proton arch therapy published in the International Journal of Particle Therapy. Researchers say it’s the first time the radiation technique has been used on head and neck cancer in the U.S.

“Managing this type of tumor is very difficult because of its natural tendency to be nerve seeking,” Dr. Rohan Deraniyagala, Beard’s radiation oncologist at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., said in a news release.

Conventional radiation therapy uses high-energy X-rays to kill cancer, but proton therapy uses a different type of radiation that involves positively charged particles. 

Proton arc therapy allows doctors to deliver radiation even more precisely, sparing healthy tissue and organs surrounding a cancer.

Beard received proton arc therapy 30 minutes a day, five days a week, for three months. The brief sessions meant she didn’t have to miss work or lose out on family time.

Since her treatment ended in early August 2024,  Beard has remained cancer-free, Deraniyagala said. She also has no radiation toxicity affecting any other areas of her body, including her brain.

“It was nice to see a patient have no side effects with this treatment other than a little skin discoloration on the left side of her face,” Deraniyagala said.

He is hopeful that other patients will have the same experience Beard did.

“Proton beam therapies continue to evolve rapidly and while in this case, step-and-shoot proton arc therapy has proven to be highly effective so far for Tiffiney, it is just the latest step toward even better treatments down the road,” he said.

“The fact that Tiffiney hardly experienced any side effects is a great outcome for this type of therapy and a good sign of even better things to come,” Deraniyagala added.

More information

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has more on proton therapy.

SOURCE: Corewell Health, April 23, 2025