Ground to Break on $182M Mayo Clinic Proton Beam Facility

PHOENIX-The Mayo Clinic is ready to launch construction on its $182 million proton beam therapy facility. Groundbreaking is taking place today on the project, with completion slated for 2016.

Jim McVeigh with Mayo Clinic’s Division of Public Affairs tells GlobeSt.com that the facility at 5777 E. Mayo Blvd. will be open to patients in 2017. Concurrently with the Phoenix construction, Mayo is building a similar proton beam therapy facility at its home campus in Rochester, MN.

“We’ve been looking at proton beam therapy for the past seven years for our three sites,” says McVeigh, adding that the third Mayo site is in Jacksonville, FL. “The Jacksonville community already has a proton beam therapy center, but the southwest and upper Midwest don’t.” The Phoenix facility will be adjacent to Mayo’s Arizona hospital on what McVeigh calls “wide, open desert” rather than near the Scottsdale clinic. McVeigh adds that the proton beam therapy facility will serve the entire southwest.

The Rochester facility is expected to open its doors in mid-2015, with all treatment rooms fully operational at both campuses by 2017.  Mayo Clinic estimates that approximately 137,000 cancer patients a year could benefit from this treatment; the current capacity is 10,000 per year. Once the clinics are operational, it’s estimated they could treat up to 2,400 patients per year; 1,200 patients at each site.

Proton beam therapy is considered more precise and less harmful than conventional radiotherapy because protons administer smaller doses to normal tissues. This means serious side effects such as tissue and organ damage can be avoided.