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A step forward for proton therapy

by Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | July 17, 2014
IBA's ProteusONE
Courtesy of IBA
Ion Beam Applications SA (IBA) announced yesterday that it has received Marketing Authorization from the FDA for its Compact Gantry Beam Line. It’s the treatment room for their new proton therapy system, ProteusONE, and it was the last piece that needed authorization for the whole system to receive FDA approval.

ProteusONE is a single-room proton therapy system and it’s smaller, less expensive and faster to install than traditional proton therapy systems, according to the company. They expect that this will intensify the national interest in the system.

The conventional systems can cost up to $100 million but the ProteusONE only costs about $25 million, Nicolas Denef, ProteusONE product manager, told DOTmed News. That’s a big deal for the U.S. market since price is one of the main concerns.

Right now, there are 14 proton therapy facilities operating in the U.S. and 12 in development, according to the National Association for Proton Therapy. However, those are mostly in big university centers, said Denef.

“What ProteusONE is going to bring is the ability to have proton therapy for much more communities and for small community hospitals,” said Denef.

Leonard Arzt, executive director of the National Association for Proton Therapy, told DOTmed News that he thinks this is a good thing for the U.S. market.

“That’s kind of the wave of the future, I think, the compact machine,” said Arzt. “That’s where it’s going because they’re more affordable and more hospitals and medical centers will have the ability to think if they’re interested in proton therapy.”

He said that Mevion Medical Systems is the leader in the compact proton therapy system market but that IBA will provide more competition.

“[Mevion] has been the leader in the market for compact machines and others are trying to get into the market,” he said.

But what sets IBA apart from Mevion is that Mevion uses the standard proton therapy technique called scattering and IBA uses a new technique called intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT). Denef said that it’s a much more precise proton therapy technique and it’s especially useful for head and neck cancers.

IMPT gives clinicians the ability to precisely sculpt the dose into the target tumor and it reaches high levels of conformality and dose uniformity even in complex-shaped tumors, said Denef.

One ProteusONE systems has already been sold in the U.S. in Shreveport, Louisiana. One system was sold in both France and China and two in Japan.

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