Haskell Selected to Design, build Maryland Proton Treatment Center

Maryland_Proton_Rendering_RJACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Haskell Company has been selected by Advanced Particle Therapy LLC and the University of Maryland School of Medicine to provide design-build services for the Maryland Proton Treatment Center, marking the second proton therapy center to be developed by Advanced Particle Therapy and its partners Haskell, Signet Development and Varian Medical Systems. Groundbreaking on the cutting-edge cancer treatment facility recently took place at the University of Maryland BioPark on the University of Maryland’s Baltimore campus.


The new treatment center will be the first in the Baltimore-Washington area to offer proton therapy, which is the favored method of treating certain types of tumors, such as prostate, brain and pediatric cancers, without damaging the surrounding healthy tissues. The Maryland Proton Treatment Center will be an 110,000-square-foot facility that is expected to treat 2,000 patients annually, create 325 construction jobs and 110 permanent jobs in the region’s life sciences industry.

Construction on the Maryland Proton Treatment Center will begin this month, and the first patient treatment is expected to occur as soon as 2014. Signet Development will serve as the lead developer for the Maryland Proton Treatment Center, and Haskell has been selected to provide design/build services for the space that will house the state-of-the-art equipment, which is manufactured by Varian Medical Systems to meet very tight tolerance requirements for proper installation.

The Maryland Proton Treatment Center will include five treatment rooms, one of which will provide a fixed beam and four of which will include a rotational gantry beam. Proton treatment is made possible by a Varian 250 MeV Superconducting Cyclotron. Varian’s 250 MeV Cyclotron is proven technology designed for high-efficiency, low-energy consumption, high reliability and modern treatment features such as pencil beam scanning, sometimes referred to as spot scanning, which enables beam intensity modulation. Intensity-modulated proton therapy makes it possible to shape the dose distribution very precisely in order to concentrate the doses on the targeted tumor while sparing normal, healthy tissues.

Upon completion, treatment at the center will be provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s radiation oncology faculty experts, who are members of the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center team.

This is the second proton therapy center to be developed in the United States by Advanced Particle Therapy and its partners. The group is currently developing a similar proton therapy center in San Diego, Calif., for Scripps Health. The Scripps Proton Therapy Center is expected to be complete in February 2013 and will treat approximately 2,400 patients annually.

To learn more about the Maryland Proton Treatment Center, visit www.medschool.umaryland.edu.

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Posted April 20, 2012

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