Proton Therapy comes to Atlanta

I conduct business one day a week in downtown Atlanta and have recently watched a large new construction site progress.   Today they had signs up announcing it will be the Emory Proton Therapy Center (part of the Emory University Hospital System).   It is being developed by Advanced Particle Therapy who also have current Proton projects in Baltimore, Dallas, and San Diego.

The center will use the Varian Probeam Super Conducting Cyclotron that will include the latest pencil beam technology.   The cyclotron will weigh 90 tons.   The center will be 107,000 square feet. have five treatment rooms, treat 2,200 patients each year, employ 150 professionals, cost $225,000,000, and will open in 2016. 

It will be operated by the Winship Cancer Institute, a division of Emory.  It is the only NCI designated cancer center in Georgia.   Interestingly Winship does not list any prostate cancer specialists, but does list specialists in Breast, Head andd Neck, Lung and other types of cancer.

Pretty sure this is what I heard on the news earlier this week:

Dallas Proton Treatment Center at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center announced in July 2012 its plans to play a key role in operating a new, state-of-the-art proton therapy center for child and adult cancer patients in the North Texas area. Dallas Proton Treatment Center will be adding to an extensive list of radiation oncology services with the development of the $225 million, 100,000 sq. ft. facility.

Dallas Proton Treatment Center has partnered with Advanced Particle Therapy, LLC to fund, design, build, equip, commission and initiate operation of the Dallas Proton Treatment Center. It will be the second proton therapy facility built in the state, featuring at least four treatment vaults and laboratory space for researchers.

The Dallas Proton Treatment Center will treat patients with brain, prostate, lung, and head and neck tumors with the potential to improve medical outcomes, reduce side effects and promote the understanding of the use of advanced technologies in cancer therapy.

The core of the new facility will be a particle accelerator capable of speeding up protons to a super-fast velocity – roughly 112,000 miles per second or 60 percent the speed of light. Early in the project’s development, Dallas Proton Treatment Center officials will evaluate and select the most useful type of accelerator for the purpose of treating cancer.
www.advancedparticletherapy.com/clinical-partners/dallas-proton-treatment-center

$225M! That's a chunk of change! I know that there are many uses for protons other than PCa. On their fact sheet they do list prostate cancer as one of its uses. It's hard to see, with all these new proton centers coming online, how they can avoid going after men with PCa, which is the largest single cancer market segment. All this spending without any published incremental benefit to the therapy -- it's hard for me to imagine what justifies such investment. The free market may turn out to be the biggest restraint in the end, as insurance companies refuse to cover it until they publish more results.

- Allen