Proton therapy for treating cancer to start at Mumbai's Tata Memorial

Proton beam therapy is expected to be soon used for cancer treatment at two hospitals in the country, the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Centre said today.

R Chidambaram said research will be taken up to develop indigenous version of proton beam therapy (PBT).

"Proton beam therapy is expected to be put to use to treat cancer patients at Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai and at a private hospital in Chennai shortly," he said.

Chidambaram was talking to reporters after taking part in the inaugural session of the Indian Particle Accelerator Conference (InPAC- 2018) at Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology here.

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The four-day meet has been organised by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences of the Department of Atomic Energy, and the Indian Society for Particle Accelerators (ISPA).

Chidambaram, a noted experimental physicist, said research to develop a fully indigenous version of proton beam therapy is going to be started soon.

He said research projects are underway to bring forth scientific aspects of the Indian traditional medicine systems like Aryuveda.

Proton therapy is a type of radiation treatment that uses protons to treat cancer. A proton is a positively charged particle. At high energy, protons can destroy cancer cells.

The therapy painlessly delivers radiation through the skin from a machine outside the body.