This article originally ran in the February 2008 issue of DOTmed Business News

Proton therapy is an overnight sensation more than 50 years in the making.

It's been known for decades that protons are a better weapon against cancer than the X-ray photons used in conventional radiation therapy. However, the use of protons was strictly limited until recent advances in medical imaging allowed doctors to visualize and target the cancers more clearly to take advantage of the precision delivery of proton radiation.




Now that multi-slice CT scanners, high-powered MRI imaging and PET technologies are in widespread use, the potential for proton therapy efficacy and adoption expands tremendously. Think of protons as cancer-killing "smart bombs" that can be put to use only with effective guidance systems.

"In the early days of proton therapy there was no imaging or very poor imaging so you had a very precise weapon and no way of seeing where you were aiming it," says Bernt Nordin, President, IBA Particle Therapy, Inc., Jacksonville, FL. "Now with better imaging we can define the tumor shape and volume in three dimensions and know exactly where to treat, and more importantly, where not to treat to avoid complications."

What's more, medical imaging advances help spot cancer in the early stages when intervention does the most good.

Why use protons instead of (or in combination with) photons? Conventional photon particles irradiate tumors too, but photons travel right through the tumor, whereas protons can be aimed to remain inside the lesion to deliver their payload.

"Proton therapy allows us to beat the diseases that we couldn't using conventional radiation therapy techniques and equipment," said Susan Michaud, Co-Director of Radiation Therapy Services, Francis H. Burr Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. "Using conventional treatment, you always end up treating normal tissues and organs. With protons we can provide a true conformal treatment to almost any area of the body and we can do that without treating normal tissues that will leave the patient with side effects," she says, noting the particular importance of that to pediatric patients.

"This is something that over the next couple of decades will be changing the field dramatically because you now have a tool that for the first time puts the radiation where you want it," explains Jerry Slater, M.D., Director of Radiation Oncology at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Slater's father James M. Slater, M.D. is a pioneer in the field who brought the technique into the hospital setting.

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