ProCure opens world’s first proton therapy training center

Bloomington can now add to its resume that it has one of only five proton therapy centers in the United States. By opening the world’s first center geared toward proton therapy training, the city is helping to advance this newly evolved form of external beam cancer treatment.\nThe ProCure Training and Development Center opened in Bloomington on March 27. \n“(The simulation center) is like a sandbox to try new things and new equipment,” Chevalier said.\nThe center was a $10 million investment for ProCure. As a private company, ProCure provided all the funding for the program. \nHadley Ford, chief executive officer of ProCure, said protons are the next evolution in external beam cancer treatments. He said protons behave much differently than radiation when treating cancer patients. When the protons go into a patient’s body they release very little energy. Once the proton reaches the tumor, it then releases all its energy. \n“The result is more radiation where you want it and less radiation where you don’t,” Ford said. \nFord said he estimates around 40,000 to 50,000 patients worldwide have been treated with proton therapy. \nThere are currently 25 employees at the center. However, Niek Schreuder, senior vice president of medical physics technology and ProCure, said he believes the facility could end up with 40 employees by the end of next year. Schreuder said ProCure hired its employees from all over the country. \n“They are the best in the world,” he said. \nSchreuder said ProCure’s first proton therapy center is currently being built in Oklahoma City. Medical professionals who will be working at the center in Oklahoma City will be coming to the center to train for about eight weeks.\nRay Chevalier, vice president of program management and engineering at ProCure, said the reason ProCure built the Training and Development Center was to create a place to train people in an environment that was as close as possible to a real center, which he said would have been too expensive.\nAnother problem with using a real center, he said, is that rooms are tied up that could be used for treating cancer patients. A good thing about the center, he said, was that it allowed for people to be trained prior to going to a treatment facility, also referred to as “before the job” training. Chevalier said a huge benefit to using a simulation center is the fact it can be used for research and development. \nChevalier said ProCure started building the center in October 2006. It took until August to get the building completed. It then took another six months to get all of the specialty equipment installed. The final room, a gantry room simulator, will be finished at the end of this month, Chevalier said. \nProCure has just started to hire those who will be training at the facility. Schreuder said human phantoms, computational models of the human body, will be used for training. Thus, the facility will provide a simulation of proton therapy in order to train the medical professionals. Schreuder said the center has all the equipment except the protons. Some of the high-tech equipment the center has includes a state-of-the-art CT scanner. This scanner will be used to scan the human phantoms. The medical professionals will be able to scan the phantoms and identify the tumor and decide how to treat it with proton therapy. Schreuder also said the CT scanner can possibly be used to scan real patients in town who can’t afford to get a CT scan from a hospital. \nBut why Bloomington? One of the reasons is Dr. John Cameron, founder of ProCure. Cameron worked at IU as a faculty member in the physics department when he founded the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute. MPRI is a real proton therapy facility located at the IU Cyclotron Facility on Milo B Sampson Lane.\n“He had a career long interest in proton therapy,” Hadley said.