Welcome to Proton Therapy!

Proton radiation treatment differs from standard radiation therapy. If given in sufficient doses, conventional radiation therapy techniques will control many cancers.

Because of the physician's inability to adequately conform the irradiation pattern to the cancer, healthy tissues may be damaged with radiation. Consequently, a less-than-desired dose frequently is used to reduce damage to healthy tissues and avoid subsequent unacceptable side effects. The characteristics of proton beam therapy enable the physician to deliver full or higher doses while sparing surrounding healthy tissues and organs.

Much research and many hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding went into developing the technology to accelerate protons. Much of that work was done at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). Fermilab physicists and engineers built the proton accelerator that exists at Loma Linda University Medical Center today.

Using high-energy protons for medical treatment was first proposed in 1946. Protons were first used to treat patients with certain cancers less than 10 years later. Research and laboratory applications increased rapidly in the next three decades. It was not until the opening of the hospital-based proton treatment facility at Loma Linda University Medical Center in 1990, however, that the full benefits of proton treatment could be offered to patients with a wide variety of cancers.

The synchrotron was invented in the 1950s to produce higher-energy particles for studying subnuclear matter. Loma Linda University Medical Center's accelerator is the world's smallest variable-energy proton synchrotron. It is designed to deliver a beam of energy sufficient to reach the deepest tumors in patients. Proton treatment is notably valuable for treating localized, isolated, solid tumors before they spread to other tissues and to the rest of the body.