Category: In the News

Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute teamed up with Leo Cancer Care to install upright patient positioning and imaging in treatment rooms.

HAMPTON, Va. — In the latest step in the fight against cancer, Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute (Hampton Proton) has entered into a unique partnership with Leo Cancer Care to help advance research into Proton Arc Therapy (PAT).

Together, they will repurpose an existing fixed-beam proton therapy treatment room by installing into it an advanced upright patient positioning system and CT scanner.

This is designed to help treatment beams more directly interact with tumors, and it’s also designed to cut down on the time a patient must remain in the treatment room. 

Alejandro Carabe, the chief medical physicist at Hampton Proton, said what makes the new technology so important is that there’s nothing else like it on the East Coast.

“I can tell you that people from all over the world will want to be a part of this,” Carabe said. “People will travel here just to use this technology.”

Hampton University Therapy Institute has one of the largest centers in the world and has the room to equip such a machine. There, it will be able to help more patients more efficiently and in a more comfortable manner.

Mayor Donnie Tuck said the new development makes the whole City of Hampton proud.

“It’s a major, major development,” Tuck said. “I’m just so happy to have this partnership in Hampton and the ultimate good that is going to come out of this.”

Medical experts hope that with the new technology, it will be able to increase chances of curability when it comes to cancer diagnoses.

“Research will begin very soon on ‘phantom’ patients yielding initial results much faster than full clinical implementation,” Stephen Towe said, Leo Cancer Care’s chief executive officer.

The installation of the technology will take several years, but medical experts hope to have it fully operational by 2026. 

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Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute teams up with Leo Cancer Care to install upright patient positioning and imaging in an existing fixed beam room.

HAMPTON, VIRGINIA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, March 7, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute (Hampton Proton) has entered into a unique partnership with Leo Cancer Care to help advance research into Proton Arc Therapy.

The partnership will see Hampton Proton – based in Hampton, Virginia – engage Leo Cancer Care to repurpose an existing fixed-beam proton therapy treatment room by installing its advanced upright patient positioning system and CT scanner.

Proton beam therapy is acknowledged as a viable and effective method of non-invasively treating many forms of cancer by more precisely targeting tumors and sparing healthy tissue from unnecessary radiation.

The Leo Cancer Care Upright Patient Positioning System rotates continuously 360 degrees, removing the need for a gantry.

Current Proton Therapy delivers radiation from a selected number of angles around the patient, which limits the options to conform the treatment to the tumor best. Because Proton Arc Therapy delivers dosing from a multiplicity of angles, it permits better conformity, thus the most biologically effective dose to the tumor, which improves the prognosis of the treatment. Current gantry-based delivery treatment methods pose incredible challenges for delivering Proton Arc Therapy with sufficient precision. Upright imaging and positioning technologies remove the need for a gantry because it uses patient rotation for treatment delivery. This could prove more conducive to the Proton Arc Therapy approach. Hampton Proton will analyze and assess the Leo system’s effectiveness.

Dr. Alejandro Carabe, the Chief Medical Physicist at Hampton Proton, said:

“The development of an upright Proton Arc Therapy treatment technique represents a paradigm shift in the field that will combine technological and therapeutical advances, which will make our Center a unique institution capable of delivering the most advanced proton delivery mode in the world.”

Stephen Towe, Leo Cancer Care’s Chief Executive Officer, said:

“The installation will take place in phases – beginning with the patient positioning system and the diagnostic quality upright CT scanner – on an experimental non-clinical basis and not requiring FDA clearance or integration with the existing proton therapy system.”

“This phased implementation will allow the centre to accelerate world-class research into the benefits of Proton Arc Therapy and proton imaging. Research will begin very soon on ‘phantom’ patients yielding initial results much faster than full clinical implementation.” said Towe.

Leo Cancer Care’s patient positioner precisely and reproducibly positions the patient in a seated position for irradiation of target tumors. The CT scanner, specially developed to image the patient in the upright position, comprises a CT scanner ring mounted on a gantry structure with support arms that tilt about a horizontal axis while allowing the CT ring to be translated along the arms using precision slide rails.

Niek Schreuder, Leo Cancer Care’s Chief Scientific Officer, said:

“The Hampton Proton facility would reap numerous benefits from upgrading the fixed beam room with upright imaging and positioning.” He said the Leo system is “perfectly suited to advancing research and the clinical development of Proton Arc Therapy at Hampton Proton”

“More importantly,” he added, “Hampton Proton will be able to deliver the best possible proton therapy to future patients.”

Mary-Beth Sullivan, Hampton Proton’s Executive Director, said:

“We are so excited to be collaborating with Leo Cancer Care. Seated treatments will make patients’ treatment much easier, especially for those unable to lie flat for treatments. Hampton Proton will be the first on the east coast to have this ability to deliver proton therapy.”

The Leo Cancer Care technology is not commercially available and will not treat patients until regulatory approval has been achieved.

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HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — Hampton University has announced a partnership with Leo Cancer Care and the Jefferson Lab Friday to help improve cancer treatment.

The new technology will enable a giant gantry to be re-positioned several times during each treatment to direct the beams from different angles. In the new therapy, the beam will remain continuous.

The improvement is expected to shorten the duration the patient is in the room and will allow the HU Proton Therapy Institute to treat more patients.

“We will be the first ones in doing something not done anywhere else in the world,” said Alejandro Carabe, Chief Medical Physicist for the HU Proton Therapy Institute

 Here’s what each of the three entities brings:

• The Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute offers benefits over traditional radiation, including shorter treatment time, less discomfort, and a higher curability rate.
• Jefferson Lab’s expertise in particle detection will ensure precision in directing the beam to cancer cells.
• Leo Cancer Care pioneered a revolutionary equipment already has seen better results by treating patients while they are seated than lying down.

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Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute, with a partnership with two other groups, will use a first-of-its kind device on the East Coast to take a new approach to a proven treatment for some cancers.

The new device will rotate the patient, sitting upward, left and right around the heavy machinery used to treat the cancers instead of rotating the heavy machinery around a stationary patient. It is named Marie after Marie Curie, the Polish woman who pioneered research into radioactivity, and it will be installed in an existing proton therapy room at Hampton University.

Proton therapy uses precise beams of radiation for treatment of tumors, saving normal, healthy tissue from radiation, according to the institute’s website.

“This creates a more targeted radiation that allows physicians the ability to focus higher levels of radiation directly on the tumor,” the website said. “The result spares more healthy cells, tissue and organs from radiation, which can significantly reduce side effects and treatment discomfort.”

The therapy institute’s partners for the project are Leo Cancer Care, the creators of the Marie system and Jefferson Lab, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory in Newport News.

Stephen Towe, CEO of Leo Cancer Care, said the story of the Marie device is one of asking why something is always done the same way.

“We are driving to improve the clinical effectiveness of radiation therapy,” Towe said.

The device is still experimental and patients will not be able to receive treatment from the device until it receives regulatory approval, according to a news release. The Marie will be installed in phases and will cost about $3 million, though this is tens of millions of dollars less than traditional proton therapy setups, according to Towe. Research done using Marie aims to advance proton arc therapy.

There are numerous benefits to the new system including less treatment time needed, more accuracy, higher dose quality, higher curability rate and more reproduceable treatment, according to Dr. Alejandro Carabe, Hampton Proton chief medical physicist.

“We have three brilliant institutions, each one of them are bringing to the table very important components,” Carabe said.

Additionally, the treatments can be done more quickly because of the device’s ability to rotate the patient instead of a technician having to come back in and rotate traditional devices around the patient throughout the procedure, according to Carabe.

The proton therapy market is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by the end of 2027, according to market and consulting group Coherent Market Insights.

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