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 Belgium's Ion Beam Applications (IBA), which has a market share of
around 50 percent, has a growing pipeline of potential proton
therapy business worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), its
finance chief Jean-Marc Bothy said.
"We don't see any exhaustion of the pipeline at all. It's very
promising how new opportunities are developing, while existing ones
continue," he told Reuters during a visit to London.
IBA, which raised its revenue forecast for 2015 last month, has been
a star of the European life sciences sector recently, with its
shares up 95 percent so far this year.
The strong outlook has been driven by growing interest among cancer
doctors and the introduction of more compact machines with a single
treatment room, which are cheaper than traditional very large
multi-room installations.
Bothy said there were now 122 proton therapy clinical trials in
progress targeting more than a dozen different cancers.
"Not only are the number of clinical studies into proton therapy
booming but they are no longer limited to brain, ocular, pediatric
and prostate cancers," he said.
These days the technology is also being tested in liver, lung,
gastric and pancreatic cancers, for example. Specialists are also
investigating its use to treat left breast cancer, in order to
minimize damage to the heart.
The process requires a beam of protons accelerated to two-thirds the
speed of light. Since protons cause little damage to cells they pass
through but are very good at killing tumors at the end of their
path, damage to surrounding tissue is limited.
That makes them well suited to treating cancers in parts of the body
where there is little room for error. But there has been a debate as
to whether proton therapy is worth using in more common cancers,
without more evidence.
Proton therapy hit the headlines in Britain last year when
five-year-old Ashya King was removed from hospital by his parents,
against the advice of doctors, and flown to Prague for proton
treatment using an IBA machine. The family say he is now free of
cancer.
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In the United States, proton therapy costs about $1,100 per
treatment session, or fraction, nearly double regular
intensity-modulated radiation. Patients may receive 30 or more
fractions.
Although half of all cancer patients receive radiation as part of
their treatment, only 1 percent get proton beams. In future, IBA
believes that could rise to 15 to 20 percent.
IBA faces fierce competition in the growing market from rivals such
as Varian Medical Systems and Hitachi.
Bothy said the Belgian group would fight to keep market share but
wouldn't sell at any price, noting that the cost of its Proteus One
single-room system had already come down to around $20 million from
$25 million at launch.
Currently, proton therapy is most common in North America and Europe
but Bothy said there were big untapped opportunities in China, Japan
and Latin America.
($1 = 0.8924 euros)
(Editing by Greg Mahlich)
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