Prostate Cancer Blog – Proton Therapy for Prostate Cancer

We received this note today from Procure about a new Proton Center that’s being built in New Jersey:

“It’s a great day for cancer patients in the United States – ProCure Treatment Centers Inc. has broken ground on its third proton therapy center, in Somerset, N.J. This press release provides details about the groundbreaking of the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in New Jersey.

Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiation treatment for cancer that does less damage to healthy tissue and has fewer short- and long-term side effects. It is an important cancer treatment option currently only available at seven centers in the country.”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

It’s great to see that Proton treatment for Prostate cancer is moving right along at the National Cancer Center (NCC) in Seoul, South Korea. We’ll add their information to our Links page. For your information, they also offer Tomotherapy, IMRT, and 3D Brachytherapy. Access to treatment at the NCC is immediate (no waiting).

As you know by now, my experience is only with Protons, where the X-ray is not used and the side effects are reduced. The main reason is that the X-ray is unstoppable and goes all the way through the body with some resultant tissue damage to adjacent tissue and/or tissue in the path. IMRT and Tomotherapy use the X-ray as the radiation vehicle. Brachytherapy uses radioactive seeds which have very short range radiation. Brachytherapy is often used in combination with X-rays, such as RCOG in Georgia.

Today, I’ve gone 10 years and 3 months since treatment without side effects – and on Jan 29th I celebrate 56 years of marriage. Loma Linda helped me see two new granddaughters. My physical in November 2009 was PSA 0.1 as it has been for over six of the past ten years.

My response time for questions about the Proton is normally less than 24 hours.

“We invite you to find out about proton therapy, our Center, the opportunities we offer for treatment and our team.”

The RPTC in Munich is the first fully certified European proton radiation centre that provides a complete hospital setting for the treatment of cancer tumours.

This innovative therapeutic procedure involves the use of high-energy proton beams to treat cancer. The special characteristic of these proton beams is that protons allow three-dimensional targeting of the tumour by contrast with the X-rays used in conventional radiation therapy. This permits highly effective doses to be delivered to the tumour while reducing the side effects of radiation by minimizing trauma to the surrounding healthy tissue.

Just as this valuable Proton Center opens and treats it’s first Patient in March 2009 – The Wall Street “Health Journal” put’s out it’s article: Prostate Cancer: Weighing Options by Melinda Beck

Ignores the Proton due to incomplete research.

Anyone who writes about Prostate Cancer Treatment should know about Protons – Once again, I am personally over nine years and seven months post Proton treatment and have NO side effects.

These are facts and grouping Protons with Radiation in general is a gross mistake. Go back to my site’s opening paragraph and note the statement, “This permits highly effective doses to be delvered to the tumour while reducing the side effects of radiation by minimizing trauma to the surrounding healthy tissue.”

That’s a fact folks, I’ve been through it with over 8,000 other men at Loma Linda Proton Center alone and we are happy.

Look at the evidence my web site alone www.prostateblog.com and then read the testimonies at www.protonbob.com.

For the WSJ, wake up and smell the roses!

Jim Tuggey
April 7, 2009

Forbes Article “The 150 Million Zapper” in the magazine dated 16 March 2009 has its own results. You can quickly go to the comments and discover the general unhappiness over this inadequately researched article, read responses by men who have actually been treated with Protons for Prostate Cancer.

IN THE MEANTIME:

• The Roberts Proton Therapy Center, University of Pennsylvania Health System, in Philadelphia, appears to be on schedule to open in 2009.
• Followed by the Procure Proton Therapy Center set to open in the summer of 2009 in Oklahoma City.
• Followed by the Hampton University Proton Treatment Center in Hampton Virginia. They have received their equipment and hope to have it installed and up by 2010.
• And, at the Northern Illinois University Proton Center – ground was broken last October 2008, equipment has been inspected and they should be on target for late 2010.

I will keep you informed as these new centers come on line to provide a solution to Prostate cancer that has been wonderful for me.

At this time I am trying to get a firm forecast on the following (over a year old) announcement from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

“SEATTLE, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) 2008 and Northwest Hospital & Medical Center today announced the signing of a letter of intent to explore the development of a new, state-of-the-art cancer treatment facility offering proton beam radiation therapy.”

Jim Tuggey
March 22, 2009

Exciting news as West Chicago breaks ground for a new Proton center at Northern Illinois University on Thursday June 19th. “The Northern Illinois Proton Treatment and Research Center”.

This center will be close to the “Fermilab”, originally named the National Accelerator Laboratory, which was commissioned by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, under a bill signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 21, 1967. Founding Director Robert R. Wilson committed the laboratory to firm principles of scientific excellence, esthetic beauty, stewardship of the land, fiscal responsibility and equality of opportunity. The Universities Research Association built the laboratory, and has operated the facility under those principles since its founding.

Robert R. Wilson was credited as the key man in recognizing the medical potential for the “Proton” that is now used so successfully in treating many Cancers including Prostate cancer.

Progress University of Pennsylvania Robert’s Proton Therapy Center selected facts: (credit – U PA Information)

• First patients expected to be treated in the Summer of 2009
• Approximately 75,000 square feet, located in a mostly underground building interconnected to PENN’s Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine and PENN’s new, conventional Department of Radiation Oncology
• Center projected to treat 3,000 patients a year, including several hundred children, continuing the historically close relationship between UPHS and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
• Facility will be capable of supporting 14 stories above it for future expansion

The Robert’s Proton Therapy Center will be…

• The first such facility in the mid-Atlantic Region.
• The first in the world to be fully integrated, on-site, with a renowned cancer center, the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
• The first proton therapy center to be located on the campus of a world-class academic medical center, facilitating pioneering scientific research to measure and improve this innovative therapy.
• The first facility with precise imaging integrated onto the proton equipment, allowing physicians to know precise tumor location at the exact moment of treatment.

I was treated at Loma Linda for Prostate cancer in 1999. My free 9 year old web site is dedicated to informing men about Protons – www.prostateproton.com. I have been without side effects from Proton treatment whatsoever, for 8 years and nine months since being treated. Loma Linda is a key leader in Proton Therapy.
Jim Tuggey June 10, 2008

A 12/26/07 article in the New York Times, Cancer Fight Goes Nuclear, With Heavy Price Tag brought the Proton up front. Not all positive but all in all alerts a great number of people to the Proton capability.

Price seems to be the concern in this article; while *I* am sure that Curing Cancer should be at the forefront above all else!

Nothing will stop this important Proton therapy. ALL my systems work today, December 31, 2007. We now have two additional Proton Therapy Centers developing, an increase from the number just reported in my Blog of early December:

A second proton center in the heavily populated Chicago area

Central DuPage would like to see its first patient by 2010. Jim Spear, the hospital’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said it’s ready to break ground on its Winfield campus “the very day” of board approval. The hospital plans to spend about $140 million on its facility. “We have everything else in place,” he said. “All our financing is secured (from private investors). All our architectural plans for building the building are secured. We have equipment on order. So we’re technically in good shape to start. All we need is the proper approval by the planning board.” Central DuPage also is partnered with ProCure Treatment Centers Inc., a Bloomington, Ind.-based firm that specializes in developing proton therapy centers.

And, a Second Proton Center in Oklahoma City:

Bloomington, Ind.-based ProCure Treatment Centers is building a four-gantry proton center in far northwest Oklahoma City along the Kilpatrick Turnpike.

ProCure has said the cost of its Oklahoma City treatment center, the first of several, will approach $100 million. ProCure has also raised private investment capital to build its treatment centers.

My personal treatment has resulted in NO Side Effects from a NON-INVASIVE treatment with Protons over 8 years and four months ago.

Just diagnosed? Send me an e-mail at jjtug @ msn.com for information.

James Slater Proton Treatment Center is the new name for the Loma Linda Proton Treatment Center in honor for the man who had the vision, staked his reputation, and followed through to see the Proton Treatment Center become a leading cancer facility with expert staff in making the Proton a viable treatment for the Prostate and many other body sites.

Protons are not new medicine; Harvard used Protons as early as 1961 and treated prostates in 1979.

Loma Linda’s Proton Center was the first built to treat patients in a Medical Center setting, in the world. Up to that time, while some were treating disease they generally were not flexible enough to treat all structural sites of the body. Loma Linda experts learned from scientific advances by many laboratories, universities, and industries and associated with Fermilab to build the center that opened in 1990.

The details about what, why, when, and where can be found in the LINK section of this site at the address: http://www.llu.edu/proton/patient/overview/medicaloverview.html

I continue to be overwhelmed by the stream of questions that come to me due to the web site and Blog. I am fine and blessed with the results of my treatment; I do not have side effects and hope that my experience gives men confidence to come forward early for treatment that minimizes the side effects.

And, stops scaring men who are diagnosed but do not know about Proton treatment. In my experience, given that men enter the program from all kinds of initial PSA values, Gleason and Staging, I know of very few men, treated with protons, who have had any problem with side effects.

Drop me an e-mail at jjtug msn.com and write Proton Treatment in the subject for a reply.

Jim Tuggey
June 1, 2007

Over the past year I lost 30 pounds and my Prostate is happy.

The obvious step for anyone is to keep in shape and lose extra body fat to help fight Prostate cancer before and after treatment.

I went to a web site http://www.mywalkingmusic.com/ where I found lots of help in overcoming extra weight and using regular walking as a great way to lose the pounds. They have put their music in a walking format at different paces 128, or 118 steps to suit your age and condition. So, I put one of their many CDs in my jogging player, walk for at least 30, sometimes 45 minutes every other day and help myself stay well.

MORE NEW PROTON TREATMENT CENTERS ON THE WAY!

The latest news is that the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences is installing a Proton center. They say, “The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center’s selection of Still River’s System places OU among the nation’s leading medical schools choosing the system, including Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis), Tufts School of Medicine (Boston) and Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine (New Jersey).

In addition, the Still River Systems equipment will be placed at the new M.D. Anderson Cancer Clinic in Orlando, Florida”.

On September 05, 2006 a Press release titled, “A Cheaper Way to Zap Tumors”, said in part, “Half of all cancer patients in the United States require radiation to combat their tumors. A form of radiation that uses protons, rather than X rays, to zap tumors causes fewer side effects to healthy tissue and may prove more effective. ( I believe that if they talk to the men who swear by Protons, including me, “May” will change to “will”.) Now a startup based in Littleton, MA, Still River Systems, is working with MIT physicists to develop a smaller, less expensive proton accelerator in the hopes of making the therapy more widely available. It expects the machine, which relies on advances in magnet technology to energize protons enough so they are therapeutic, to be in hospital trials in 2008.”

The above statements appear to tie in with the University of Oklahoma’s release.

For those of you that are reluctant to decide – Protons are here to stay!

I just suggest one thing: if your Doctor, Urologist, or Oncologist cannot tell you the difference between X-Rays and Protons, you can tell whomever it is that they really need to learn the advantage of minimal to NO tissue damage using proton radiation!