Photograph by Robert Boston Photography
The treatment room at the new Kling Center for Proton Therapy, part of Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, doesn’t look much different than most radiation treatment rooms. But behind the nondescript walls is the world’s first superconducting synchrocyclotron proton accelerator.
The revolutionary part: The center will use proton therapy, a highly targeted radiation treatment that allows doctors to kill cancer cells with precision, minimizing damage to surrounding tissue. (At press time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved the center’s smaller accelerator, but the room wasn't slated for operation until the fall.)
In the past few years, patients have started to travel to Chicago, Oklahoma City, or Bloomington, Ind., for proton-therapy treatments. But those cities’ accelerators are at least the size of a football field and cost up to $225 million. The Kling Center’s accelerator will be the first to fit inside one room and costs $20 million.
Dr. Jeff Bradley, a radiation oncologist and the director of the new center, says proton therapy’s more targeted treatment is especially helpful for children. “Most pediatric [cancer] patients are cured of their disease,” explains Bradley. “You want to minimize the side effects that they live with for the rest of their lives.”
Proton therapy is an especially good alternative to X-ray radiation therapy, says Bradley, when the cancer is near critical organs or sensitive spots such as the brain, eye, nervous system, or spine. To make the machine even more precise, the $20 million center recently installed a couch that can move up, down, sideways, and diagonally.
Bradley is also working behind the scenes to help ensure that insurance companies cover the treatment. “I’ve been working on that for about two years,” he says. “I’ve been working with our local Medicare provider, helping them write their policy to treat things that are appropriate with protons.”
Of course, the trend toward machines growing smaller thanks to technological advancements isn’t new. “It’s kind of like buying a computer,” Bradley says. Still, he isn’t worried about his own machine falling out of date anytime soon—he’s just glad he could bring the therapy here.
“At some point,” he says, “you have to buy the computer.”
