Advanced Particle Therapy knows it's no easy task to develop, open and run a proton therapy center for cancer treatment. Long before Scripps Health announced it would open the San Diego-based center, APT started developing it.

"It takes a long time for clinical partners to decide to move forward," said Jeff Bordok, APT president. "We knew that there were a couple of institutions in that market that were trying to get a proton center and couldn't quite complete the task. We reviewed the [San Diego] market and saw it's a great place to be so we decided to go ahead and buy the land and start developing the center and identify a clinical partner later."

But now the development plans are in motion, with APT at the helm and Ohio-based Signet Development serving as the lead developer to oversee coordination and delivery and assist with project financing. This is the first proton therapy center project for both APT and Signet.

"It's a very exciting project," said Ken Krismanth, Signet's president. "It's exciting to be involved with this type of technology, developing something so unique."

Groundbreaking for the new center begins later this month and is expected to be completed in early 2013. Once completed, the Scripps Proton Therapy Center will be just one of eight proton therapy centers in the country, according to a statement announcing the project.

The center is also a first for Scripps Health.

"Scripps is excited to help give patients access to one of the most sophisticated weapons in the fight against cancer," said Steve Carpowich, Scripps' manager of corporate public relations, in an e-mail to DOTmed News.

APT will fund the $185-million center, which will offer the most advanced and precise form of radiation therapy available for cancer treatment. Proton therapy uses accelerated protons to precisely treat tumors throughout the body. The precision of this treatment causes less damage to healthy surrounding tissue, which allows for a more potent, effective radiation dose to be used.

DOTmed News reported in May that there is a growing demand for proton therapy centers. In fact, there was a 200 percent jump in the number of prospective sites and a 75 percent growth in the number of centers online or being commissioned from 2005 to 2010.

The San Diego center is the first APT-backed center, but the company has a couple of other centers in the works, Bordok told DOTmed News.

The 103,000-square-foot center, featuring two fixed-beam treatment rooms and three rotational beam gantries, will treat up to 2,400 patients annually. APT will purchase equipment from Varian Medical Systems, the largest company in the world for proton therapy equipment, said Bordok.

"We're very happy to be working with them," he said.

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