Video | Roberts Proton Therapy Center

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Every dream starts with an idea. The belief that a single action can have an extraordinary impact. The certainty that something you do today will give people hope for tomorrow. On January 28, 2008, a 200-foot long trailer truck snaked its way to West Philadelphia. Its cargo…a 220-ton cyclotron that is the heart of Penn Medicine's dream, the new Roberts Proton Therapy Center. Within the walls of this magnificent facility, innovative treatments will be developed. Trailblazing research will open new doors. Tumors once considered inaccessible will be targeted and treated. And patients from around the nation and around the world will discover why at Penn Medicine, the only option is every option.

James Metz, MD: The Roberts Proton Therapy Center is the largest proton treatment center in the world...There will be opportunities here for treatment that are not experienced anyplace else in the world. This opens up whole new windows for us in cancer treatment. We can now combine radiation therapy with chemo and other sensitizers that we could never do before.

Ralph Muller, CEO, UPHS: "People who have medical needs always want to know that a place like Penn will keep advancing medicine, inventing the future of medicine…we have a therapy that is not available elsewhere, that's compassionate for people. …that cannot be duplicated, makes a big difference to our patients. That's why we're so proud to be at Penn Medicine."

Made possible by a transformational, $15 million gift from the Roberts family, the Roberts Proton Therapy Center is one of only a handful of such centers in the United States, and houses technology that will revolutionize the way that Penn treats cancer.

Craig B. Thompson, MD: "Every day we have the resources to advance cancer care in this wonderful new facility and adding the Roberts Proton Therapy Center to that really gives us a full quiver of arrows to attack this dreaded disease."

M. Sean Grady, MD: "The addition of proton therapy is really about our ability – to do anything we can for the patient, whether it's surgery or chemotherapy, or proton therapy, or standard radio therapy. It enables us to do every single thing we can, and make choices that we couldn't previously make."

Douglas L. Fraker, MD: "By having additional tools such as proton therapy at the Roberts Proton Center, we may have the ability to take a tumor that we would not be able to cut out otherwise, have it shrink down and then be able to remove it to hopefully cure the patient."

Stephen M. Hahn, MD: "Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy where were able to aim the beam very precisely to the patients tumor and what that allows us to do is to increase the dose to the patients tumor and spare the surrounding normal tissues."

This means Penn now has the ability to treat tumors close to critical organs and the potential to re-treat tumors after recurrences.

The Roberts Proton Therapy Center delivers the most precise form of advanced radiation therapy available. Proton therapy works by targeting a focused beam of high-dose radiation to a specific tumor site dramatically decreasing damage to surrounding normal tissue. This form of therapy results in fewer side effects and clinical complications for patients, and it enhances the physicians ability to more safely treat tumors close to critical organs and the spinal cord.

Approximately 75,000 square feet in size, the Robert Proton Therapy Center features five treatment rooms: four with treatment gantries and one fixed-beam room. The Center has the most advanced options available for patient positioning and comfort and will afford patients the opportunity to have multi-modality treatment with chemotherapy, surgery and other forms of radiation. The Center also has state-of-the-art research capabilities to assist our scientists in finding new and safer treatments for cancer patients.

The Roberts Proton Therapy Center is expected to treat 3,000 patients a year, including several hundred children in partnership with The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Penn also has established a partnership with Walter Reed Army Medical Center, through which proton therapy technology will be available to treat United States military personnel.

The Roberts Proton Therapy Center was made possible in part through a generous gift from the Roberts family.

Video about the Roberts Proton Therapy Center

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