UK to get first three proton beam therapy centres in cancer care milestone

The UK is to get its first three proton beam therapy centres in what is being hailed as a cancer treatment milestone.

The centres will open in Cardiff, London and Northumberland by 2017, with the first, in Cardiff, becoming operational next year.

The announcement comes after the parents of brain cancer survivor Ashya King told how the five-year-old made a “miracle” recovery after receiving proton beam therapy in Prague in the Czech Republic.

Brett and Naghmeh King prompted an international police hunt in August when they took Ashya from a Southampton hospital against doctors’ wishes.

The couple, from Southsea, Hampshire, were found in Spain, where they have a holiday home, and were detained for three nights before a high court judge in London granted permission for them to seek proton beam therapy at a centre in Prague. The therapy was not initially offered on the NHS, although the health service later agreed to fund it.

Proton beam therapy limits the collateral damage of radiation to other vital organs, such as the heart and liver in Ashya King’s case. It also said to have a lower risk of side effects.

The new UK centres will be available for NHS patients from England, Scotland and Wales, patients with private health insurance and self-paying patients.

The centres are being opened by private health company Proton Partners International, which has £100m of financial backing from institutional and private investors.

Professor Gordon McVie, senior consultant at the European Institute of Oncology and chairman of the company, said the new centres are an “exciting and important development of the provision of cancer treatment in the UK”.

“As things stand, patients who can benefit from this treatment have to go abroad for treatment, often at great expense to the NHS,” he said.

It is anticipated that NHS demand for proton beam therapy abroad will reach 1,500 patients by 2017, according to the company.

In addition to Proton Partners’ treatment services, the Cardiff centre will provide conventional radiotherapy, chemotherapy and supportive care. This could then be offered at other centres.

Proton beam therapy targets radiation directly at the tumour, avoiding healthy surrounding tissue, but it is still unclear whether it is as good at destroying cancerous tissue. As it is usually reserved for very rare types of cancer, comprehensive evidence about its effectiveness is also limited.

Cancer Research UK estimates that only one in 100 people would be suitable for proton beam therapy. There are also concerns that the long-term impact of the nascent procedure is not yet known. Although patients who have travelled abroad for treatment have responded well, like Ashya, these people would have been specifically chosen because of this.

The government has announced that it is to create two NHS proton beam therapy units which will open in 2018.