Why in news?  Proton beam therapy is becoming popular among cancer treatment, but out of reach for many cancer patients.

Highlights:

• Apollo Proton Cancer Centre, Chennai is the country’s first and only hospital to have proton beam therapy in clinical operation.

About Proton beam therapy

• Proton therapy, also called proton beam therapy, is a type of radiation therapy.
• It uses protons rather than x-rays to treat cancer.
• A proton is a positively charged particle, high energy protons can destroy cancer cells.
• For treatment proton therapy can be used alone or may also combine it with x-ray radiation therapy, surgery, chemotherapy, and/or immunotherapy.
• Breakthroughs in this technology, including pencil beam scanning and highly precise image guidance, have led to the adoption of this technology worldwide
• Like x-ray radiation, proton therapy is a type of external-beam radiation therapy. It painlessly delivers radiation through the skin from a machine outside the body.
• The advantage of proton beam therapy is that it allows a more targeted treatment of cancerous tumours while causing remarkably fewer side-effects.

What are the challenges?

• It is far costlier than traditional cancer therapy
• Setting up a PBT centre is fraught with infrastructural and regulatory challenges stemming from safety concerns from the Department of Atomic Energy
• There are concerns of safety, as hydrogen is a highly volatile element and need to run daily checks to prevent leak.