Cancer therapy with accelerated charged particles is one of the most valuable biomedical applications of nuclear physics. The technology has vastly evolved in the past 50 years, the number of clinical centers is exponentially growing, and recent clinical results support the physics and radiobiology rationale that particles should be less toxic and more effective than conventional X-rays for many cancer patients. Charged particles are also the most mature technology for clinical translation of ultra-high dose rate (FLASH) radiotherapy. However, the fraction of patients treated with accelerated particles is still very small and the therapy is only applied to a few solid cancer indications. The growth of particle therapy strongly depends on technological innovations aiming to make the therapy and . The most promising solutions to reach these goals are superconductive magnets to build compact accelerators; gantryless beam delivery; online image-guidance and adaptive therapy with the support of machine learning algorithms; and high-intensity accelerators coupled to online imaging. Large international collaborations are needed to hasten the clinical translation of the research results.

I briefly summarize recent results for nucleon and [Formula: see text] electromagnetic, axial and transition form factors in the Dyson-Schwinger approach. The calculation of the current diagrams from the quark-gluon level enables a transparent discussion of common features such as: the implications of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and quark orbital angular momentum, the timelike structure of the form factors, and their interpretation in terms of missing pion-cloud effects.