A medical clinic is strengthening its bond with ASU to provide better cancer treatment in brand new facilities.
The Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit medical practice based in Scottsdale, announced Nov. 16 that it will be building two new research centers — one in their research facility in Arizona, and another in Minnesota — to help treat cancer.
The facilities, which will cost $370 million will be part of the new Mayo Clinic Proton Beam Therapy Program and will use pencil beam scanning — named for the thinness of the radiation beams used — to help treat cancer.
The current building plan for Arizona is a 100,000-square-foot facility that will employ 130 staff members, according to a press release from the clinic. The clinic hopes to open doors on the facility by early 2015.
ASU will help the clinic better understand the technology behind the science, providing clinicians with information and research to better heal patients, said Sethuraman Panchanathan, ASU’s chief research officer of knowledge enterprise development.
Panchanathan said the University will help the Mayo Clinic understand the complexities behind the physics of the equipment, which emits pencil sized beams of radiation.
“We know more details about the equipment,” Panchanathan said. “We have particle physics people who are able to help [clinicians] understand the basic physics behind all of this.”
ASU will also help play a role in training the estimated 250 new employees that will work in the facilities. ASU offers joint degrees for Mayo medical students in Minnesota.
The University currently works with the clinic to better research medical treatment methods.
“Every year we fund about five to six projects where researchers at ASU work with clinicians at Mayo on research projects,” Panchanathan said.
According to a press release from the clinic, pencil beam scanning can provide better control over radiation doses, and there are fewer side effects among patients.
The pencil beam scanning will provide smaller doses of radiation to tumors, allowing the clinicians to better optimize the dose of radiation for each patient, said Dr. Steven Schild, chair of the clinic’s department of radiation oncology in Arizona.
“Protons administer a small dose [of radiation] to normal tissues for a given tumor dose than radiotherapy,” Schild said.
Dr. Robert Foote, chair of the clinic’s department of radiation oncology in Rochester, Minn., said the use of pencil beam scanning will be most beneficial to young patients to prevent long-term harm from X-ray therapy used in some treatment.
“Children with cancer suffer the greatest long-term harm from conventional X-ray therapy, since their organs are still developing,” Foote said.
The therapy will also help the group study pencil beam scanning through a registry system that all patients will be tracked through.
“[The registry] will allow Mayo Clinic to track these patients prospectively into the future, determine which patients gain the most benefit,” Foote said.
Foote added that because the therapy is a relatively new development — first used at the University of Texas in 2006 — it is not as widespread as radiation therapy using larger beams. The thinner beams allow doctors to deliver a dose of radiation directly to the tumor while minimizing damage to surrounding organs.
Radiation therapy can produce genetic mutations in organs. This can lead to limited or ceased functions of affected organs.
Reach the reporter at michael.reppenhagen@asu.edu
