Hadassah performs world's first alpha radiation treatment for recurrent brain cancer

At Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, a 77-year-old man became the first person on earth to receive a treatment that sounds like science fiction but is now clinical reality: tiny radioactive seeds injected directly into his brain tumor, delivering concentrated alpha particles with surgical precision while leaving healthy tissue nearly untouched.

The patient had already endured the standard assault against glioblastoma—surgery to remove the tumor, radiation therapy, chemotherapy. And still it came back. This is the cruel arithmetic of the disease: even when doctors do everything right, the tumor recurs in the vast majority of cases. About 150 to 250 Israelis are diagnosed with glioblastoma each year. Most die within 15 to 16 months. Only one in ten survives five years. For someone facing recurrence, the options narrow to almost nothing.

Enter Alpha DaRT, a technology developed through years of collaboration between Hadassah's Sharett Institute of Oncology and a company called ALPHA Tau. The innovation works by injecting radiation sources into the tumor from two separate pathways at the same time, allowing doctors to blanket the cancer with alpha particles—highly efficient at killing cells—while the radiation stays concentrated in the tumor itself. The procedure uses the same navigation systems neurosurgeons already rely on for brain biopsies, systems accurate to the millimeter. After taking a tissue sample to confirm the tumor was still active, the surgical team used that same precision to place the alpha sources into the tumor's center. No extensive brain surgery needed. No scalpel cutting through healthy tissue.

Professor Yigal Shoshan, who directs neurosurgery and oncology at Hadassah, led the operation. He described the procedure as the culmination of years of work: laboratory studies, animal models, custom applicators designed specifically for brain tumors, endless practice runs in the operating room. Every step was engineered to ensure that when the technology finally reached a patient, it would be done with the highest possible safety. "Seeing the technology reach a patient in Israel for the first time today is an exciting moment for everyone who has been part of this journey," Shoshan said.

What makes this moment significant extends beyond the single patient. Preliminary results from a parallel study in the United States, called REGAIN, examined three patients treated with the same technology. All three showed full local control of their disease. Two showed no evidence of tumor growth after treatment. Those numbers, small as they are, represent something the neuro-oncology community has been hungry for: a new direction for a disease with almost no good options.

Preclinical studies suggest the treatment may do something else too—trigger an immune response that attacks tumor cells in other parts of the brain, not just where the seeds were placed. That possibility remains to be tested in humans, but it hints at why this technology has drawn attention from cancer researchers worldwide.

The researchers are careful to frame this moment correctly. The current study is designed to examine whether the treatment is feasible and safe. Only after that phase is complete can they expand to larger groups and begin measuring whether it actually extends survival. But for patients with recurrent glioblastoma who have exhausted standard options, this is a first step—and a significant one. The plan is already underway to expand trials to patients with brain metastases, cancers that have spread to the brain from elsewhere in the body, especially cases where other precision treatments have failed. Shoshan believes the ability to inject alpha sources directly into a tumor and deliver accurate, efficient local radiation makes it particularly suited for that work as well.