ARCHITECT'S RENDERING OF NEW PROTON BEAM THERAPY FACILITY IN ROCHESTER, MINN.(Courtesy of mayoclinic.org)
A new cancer treatment center in Rochester, Minnesota is well underway thanks to a very generous 100 million dollar donation by Richard Jacobson, among others. This recent project by Mayo Clinic is seen as revolutionary, mainly due to their featuring of the new Proton Beam Therapy Program. Mayo Clinic announced their plans for this center back in 2010 with high hopes for a revolutionary new way of combating cancer (see our previous article Cancer Research and Therapy Gift of $100M to Mayo Clinic from 2011). The uniqueness of this program stems from its commitment to solely using intensity-modulated proton beam therapy instead of generic and far more risky radiotherapy treatments, which can harm healthy tissue unlike proton beams that are specially designed to only target the tumor.
Proton Beam Gantry courtesy of protoncancercenters.com
Other benefits to this new treatment include:
- better control over the amount of radiation exposed to the patient's body
- a more precise tumor targeting ability
- shorter treatment times
- fewer and less intense side effects
Once this facility is up and running in 2015, an estimated 1,240 patients will be treated there annually, with an astounding average of 138 patients a day! There will also be many new job opportunities opened up to doctors, physicists, and construction workers, around 750 in total, and more than 250 staff employed once the program is fully operational.
Over 400 million dollars have been invested in this project in order to ensure the highest quality care for cancer patients, and because of Mayo Clinic's revolutionary plans with this technology, patients can look forward to state-of-the-art treatment that has never been seen before.
If you are a Rochester, Minnesota researcher looking for new research equipment, or a research supplier who is interested in networking with researchers like these and supplying new science programs like this cancer treatment center at the Mayo Clinic, plan on attending Biotechnology Calendar, Inc.'s BioResearch Product Faire™ in Rochester on July 25 of this year. For more information about our upcoming vendor show, click the button below.