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The History of Proton Therapy

Program: Proton Therapy for Pediatric Cancer
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Andrew Schorr:

Wow.  Well, that’s quite a story.  Dr. Mahajan, now, some people say, well, this whole idea of proton therapy sounds kind of new to me.  So somebody would say, well, sounds good now and a child like Matthew is doing well, but what about years later.  Is the concept of proton to fight cancer, is that really new or did it just take a while to finally get the finances together and all the logistics to build the centers? 

Dr. Mahajan:

It’s actually been around for many, many decades.  The first proton therapy patients were treated back in the 1950s, and one of the oldest centers was treating patients in the 1960s.  What’s caught up with protons is technology, is the ability to develop a gantry system and the machining for developing these large medical-level type facilities.  Used to be that patients were treated in a physics lab, and the medical side of things were just kind of offshooting from the proton source in a physics environment. 

So I think there is a safety record for proton therapy.  And what we’re trying to do now is really gain more and more confidence and information about reduction of late effects, and there’s certainly the theoretical advantage and everything points towards the fact that we should be getting those advantages as we get more robust data on our patients.

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