What is Proton Cancer Treatment?

Proton cancer treatment therapy is a type of particle therapy that uses a beam of protons to irradiate diseased tissue. It is most often used in the treatment of cancer. A proton is a subatomic particle that has a positive electric charge of one elementary charge. You may remember protons from high school physics class; these are the same particles that constitute the beam that targets diseased tissue in the body.

Proton therapy uses ionizing radiation to target a tumor with a beam of protons. These charged particles damage the DNA of the cancer cells, ultimately causing their death or interfering with their ability to proliferate (a process that leads the spread of cancer in the body). Cancerous cells are particularly vulnerable to attacks on DNA because of their high rate of division and their reduced abilities to repair damage to their DNA.

Because protons have a relatively large mass, they have little lateral side scatter within the body’s tissue. This means that the beam does not broaden very much and stays focused on the tumor it is targeting without affecting the tissue it must pass through along the way. The proton beam delivers only low-dose side effects to the tissue surrounding the cancer as well, something that traditional radiation therapy does not do. Conventional radiation therapy uses X-ray beams composed of both primary protons and secondary electrons that deposit their energy along the path of the beam, not just to the targeted tumor. The X-ray beam also delivers radiation to healthy tissues surrounding the cancer. These healthy cells can become damaged along with the cancer cells, a side effect which has long lasting physical effects on the body. I’ll be going over some of the benefits of proton therapy later on in this ebook, but I think you can see how having a radiotherapy treatment that targets only the cancer cells and does not damage healthy surrounding tissue has vast advantages.