Mevion Medical Systems today announced that the first proton center in the Mountain West, the Senator Orrin G. Hatch Center for Proton Therapy, has opened at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah (U of U) and began treating patients on May 11^th with the MEVION S250i Proton Therapy System®. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mevion team successfully installed the MEVION S250i in 7 months from the delivery of the accelerator.

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The teams from HCI, U of U and Mevion gather to celebrate the center’s grand opening. Group from left to right: Bill Salter, Ph.D., Senior Director of Radiation Oncology, HCI and Professor and Chief of the Division of Medical Physics, U of U -- Robyn Walker, Sr. Director, Customer Success and Service Operations, Mevion -- James Cooley, Ph.D., Director of Advanced Development, Mevion -- Dennis Shrieve, M.D., Ph.D., Chair in Cancer Research, HCI and Chair of Department of Radiation Oncology, U of U -- Tina Yu, Ph.D., CEO, Mevion -- Michael Good, M.D., Interim President, U of U and Sr. VP for Health Sciences, U of U Health -- Ying Hitchcock, M.D., Professor and Medical Director, Department of Radiation Oncology, U of U. (Photo: Business Wire)

HCI is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Mountain West and serves a geographic region that includes all of Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming.

“After more than a decade of monitoring and evaluating the evolution of proton therapy technology, along with the needs of our patients, we are excited to officially launch our proton center and to provide this extraordinary treatment option to our patients,” said Bill Salter, Ph.D., Senior Director of Radiation Oncology at HCI and Professor and Chief of the Division of Medical Physics at the U of U. “Our initial experience of treating both adult and pediatric tumors has already made evident the unique clinical capabilities of proton technology.”

The center features Mevion’s industry leading HYPERSCAN® pencil beam scanning technology and Adaptive Aperture® pMLC. The powerful duo provides faster and more precise dose delivery and minimizes damage to surrounding healthy tissue and sensitive organs at risk. HCI has also integrated a diagnostic CT on-rail system and a surface-guidance tracking system, enabling a state-of-art Image-Guided Proton Therapy (IGPT) configuration to align and treat patients with the upmost accuracy.

Thanks to the reduced size and complexity of the MEVION S250i, the HCI Center for Proton Therapy was placed in a small available space alongside HCI’s existing radiation therapy department. This significantly decreased the project construction and operation cost and allows the cancer center to share existing resources and give patients access to all of HCI’s cancer treatment and research offerings under one roof.

“It is to our greatest pleasure that the underserved patients in the Mountain West now have access to proton therapy,” said Tina Yu, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Mevion Medical Systems. “We are honored to partner with HCI to make this happen and look forward to our many years of collaboration and research to further advance this superior treatment modality.”

As the leading supplier of compact proton therapy systems in the United States, Mevion has been selected by more leading cancer centers, including NCI-Designated Cancer Centers, and has treated over 6,000 patients worldwide.

About Mevion Medical Systems

Since 2004, Mevion Medical Systems has been the leading provider of compact proton therapy systems for cancer care. Dedicated to advancing the design and accessibility of proton therapy worldwide, Mevion was the first company to innovate this new single-room platform and continues to further the science and application of proton therapy. Mevion’s flagship product, the MEVION S250i Proton Therapy System with HYPERSCAN pencil beam scanning, is the world’s smallest proton therapy system that eliminates the obstacles of size, complexity, and cost that exists with other proton therapy systems. Mevion is headquartered in Littleton, Massachusetts, with a presence in Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.mevion.com.

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