Penn Medicine/Virtua Health to open South Jersey’s first proton therapy center for cancer patients

Virtua Health and Penn Medicine executives this week previewed the region’s new $45 million Proton Therapy Center, the first in South Jersey offering proton beam therapy to cancer patients.

The center at the Virtua Voorhees Hospital Campus is set to open to patients early next year. It uses a proton beam to zap, or “radiate,” cancer cells in patients with some of the most difficult-to-treat disease, particularly spinal cord and brain tumors that can’t be fully removed with surgery because they are so close to vital organs.

Kevin Mahoney, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, hailed the center as “the latest state-of-the-art weapon to fight cancer right here in South Jersey.”

But many in the medical community are still debating the benefits of an expensive technology. Virtua Health and Penn Medicine join a small but growing number of hospitals — about 40 nationwide — to offer proton therapy.

The machine itself looks like something out of a science fiction movie. A 90-ton device, called a cyclotron, occupies a warehouse-like space that spans three stories. The cyclotron accelerates protons to two-thirds the speed of light, about 450 million miles per hour.

A massive cylinder-shaped structure, known as a “gantry,” rotates around the patient to direct the proton beam to the tumor with “a millimeter of accuracy,” Robert Beecher, assistant vice president of radiation oncology at Virtua Health, said during a tour of the facility.

“Protons work best in tumors that are not moving, usually smaller, and near critical structures that we don’t want to cause too much toxicity,” James Metz, chair of Radiation Oncology at Penn Medicine, said Tuesday at a VIP preview event unveiling the new facility to hospital executives, board members and donors.

There is limited research comparing the effectiveness of proton therapy and traditional radiation.

A study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University found that patients treated with proton therapy were less likely to suffer severe side effects, compared with those who received radiation, but there was no difference in how long the patients lived. The study retrospectively analyzed 1,483 patient cases to compare effectiveness of the two treatments, but can’t be used to draw conclusions about the medical benefit of proton therapy, researchers said in a note about the study’s limitations.

In an editorial that accompanied the 2020 study, Yale’s Henry Park and James Yu wrote that “the evidence needed to truly justify the expenses of proton therapy … will need to come from phase 3 randomized clinical trials.”

Proton radiation treatment is not always covered by health insurance. Metz, of Penn Medicine, said Medicare covers it.

The scene Tuesday evening, under a white party tent in a parking lot outside the new center, was festive, with a three-piece band, food and drink, and a lighting ceremony.

“For me, the upcoming opening of this center is not just the highlight of the year, this is surely one of the highlights of my career,” Stephanie Fendrick, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Virtua Health, said to applause during her opening remarks. “We will welcome our first patient in about two months and more patients will come in the months and years to follow. I want each of these people to walk in our doors with a sense of hope.”

About 150 people attended, including Deb Harris, a 63-year-old Voorhees resident and cancer patient. Harris was diagnosed in 2017 with a brain tumor. After surgery, she required a year of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation. Harris told the crowd that she had to rely on friends and family to drive her into Philadelphia, five days a week, as she underwent treatment at Penn’s Roberts Proton Therapy Center, which opened in 2010.

“It brings me joy to know now that, starting very soon in South Jersey, my neighbors will have an easier, more accessible option should they need similar care,” she said.

Harris said a scan last month showed no disease, though she had a type of brain tumor that will likely grow back.

Staff writer Sarah Gantz contributed to this article.