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 Now Jongen's company IBA is hiring 400 engineers to cope with demand
for the technology, increasing its workforce by a third, and
expanding its production capacity to make up to 30 machines a year,
from a maximum of eight now.
"It is such a responsibility to send a beam of potentially lethal
particles into the body of a fellow human being. It is exciting but
scary at the same time," he said.
Proton therapy made the front pages 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 treatment
using an IBA-made machine.
There are only 170 proton therapy treatment rooms worldwide to
handle about 1 percent of radiation therapy patients.
But there is already a consensus on the technology's benefits for
certain types of patients, such as children and young adults with
spinal cord and base of brain tumors and a growing belief that it
could also limit side effects.
King's family say he is now free of cancer.
A spin-off of the Catholic University of Louvain's nuclear physics
department, IBA began life making cyclotrons to produce
radioisotopes for hospitals and radiopharmaceutical companies.
"We would sell one machine a year and enjoy ourselves a lot doing
it," said Jongen, 68, who founded IBA in 1986.
IBA's offices on the edges of a university campus, near a roundabout
decorated with parts of Belgium's first ever cyclotron, are bursting
at the seams, with offices split into ever smaller cubicles.
Proton therapy originated in the physics labs of the post-war period
when scientists first described how protons could radiate tumors
with more accuracy than standard x-ray therapy.
The technology at the time was not good enough to tackle tumors deep
inside the body, however, and in the late 1980s Jongen was urged by
an oncologist to "revolutionize cancer therapy" by applying his
cyclotron technology to proton therapy.
Jongen needed to create a cyclotron strong enough to speed up
particles to two thirds of the speed of light. On a flight back from
Australia inspiration struck and when he got off the plane he had
sketched a basic framework for the new machines.
When IBA opened its first center at the Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston in 2001, it was the first to install a ready-made
product outside of the big nuclear physics centers.
Nowadays, the group competes with U.S. group Varian as well as
Japanese heavy industry groups Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, and
is market leader outside of Japan, a position it hopes to
consolidate with the introduction of a much more compact version of
its machines.
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EXPANDING MARKETS
Scientific uncertainty about where proton therapy is useful and
where it is not, may in part explain why studies have shown vastly
differing estimates for demand, ranging from just 1.5 percent in
Britain to 20 percent in the United States.
"Researchers always assumed that there were benefits to proton
therapy over traditional radiotherapy, but only over the past years
have we had a string of medical studies to effectively prove this in
the field," said Roderick Verhelst, analyst at private bank Degroot
Petercam.
Medical studies are focusing on using proton therapy in gastric,
liver, lung, and pancreatic cancers as well as left breast cancer,
in order to minimize damage to the heart.
There are, however, also cases in which experts believe that proton
therapy's higher cost may not be justified.
"There are examples where using proton therapy wouldn't bring an
advantage as the side effects are already small with conventional
therapy," said Stephanie Combs, head of radiation oncology at
Munich's Rechts der Isar Hospital.
Proton therapy's costs have also hampered its growth.
The powerful cyclotrons behind the technology weigh some 220 tonnes
and need to be housed in a bunker, meaning therapy centers occupy
entire hospital wings.
The machines, which can take years to build and calibrate, have a
price tag in excess of 100 million euros ($112 million), setting a
high threshold for smaller hospitals to invest.
In response, IBA was the first to shrink the cyclotron to less than
a quarter of its original weight, while still delivering the energy
needed. These compact systems, which come at a quarter of the cost,
allow smaller hospitals to install them alongside traditional
radiation therapy machines.
"Other companies have signed contracts to install such compact
systems but have yet to deliver a fully operational treatment room,"
Verhelst said.
According to IBA's own forecast, a worldwide increase to 20 percent
of radiation patients treated with proton therapy would require the
number of installed rooms to rise above 2,500.
In the first half of 2016, IBA's order intake grew by about a third
to 143.6 million euros ($160 million). Since 2014 its share price
has quintupled.
(Editing by Alexander Smith)
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