Compact Particle Acceleration

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City: Livermore

State: California

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Country: United States

CPAC is developing and commercializing a highly compact intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) system powered by the dielectric-wall accelerator (DWA), a revolutionary proton accelerator that will have a substantially smaller structure and greater flexibility than other accelerators.* Proton therapy is acknowledged in the radiotherapy community as a superior mode of treatment over standard photon therapy. Proton therapy significantly reduces the amount of damage to adjacent healthy tissue that often occurs with traditional photon radiation methods. In addition to being a better form of therapy, in most places it has greater reimbursement and can be performed more efficiently. Therefore, there can be a greater volume of patients treated for each treatment room. Yet, of the several million patients treated worldwide with radiotherapy each year, only a few thousand receive particle therapy. Why so few? The primary reasons are system cost and equipment size. Most current particle-based systems exceed $100M and can approach $200M, which is driven by both expensive components, facilities and the need for multiple treatment rooms in order to achieve sufficient treatment volume to support the system costs. CPAC’s initial product will be an FDA approved fixed-beam proton therapy unit that will focus on stereotactic cancer treatments that are typically within the breast, chest, central nervous system, head, neck, and eyes. The treatment volume for these cancers represents 54% of all existing radiation treatments. With additional development, later systems will likely generate higher energy levels and include the capability to move the beamline for greater directionality. We anticipate that the later systems will be able to treat most forms of cancer.

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