The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has struck a new partnership aimed at bringing a cutting-edge form of cancer radiation therapy to North America for the first time. The hospital announced a strategic alliance with Israeli medical technology company P-Cure on Friday to develop and clinically validate a compact, upright treatment platform capable of delivering both proton and helium ion therapy — a combination that, if it pans out, would mark a first for the continent.
According to a release distributed via PRWeb, the two organizations say they have formed the alliance “to advance the development and clinical validation of a next-generation particle therapy platform.” The plan centers on P-Cure's existing compact proton therapy platform, which is already FDA-cleared, while laying groundwork for a second treatment option built around helium ions.
The collaboration will start with what the companies describe as the more established piece of the puzzle: clinical evaluation of P-Cure's proton therapy platform. From there, researchers plan to move into preclinical and clinical work examining helium ions specifically, with the goal of establishing their therapeutic potential alongside protons in the same machine.
Why Helium Could Matter for Tumor Targeting
Particle therapy in general is prized in cancer treatment because it can deliver highly conformal radiation while minimizing exposure to the healthy tissue surrounding a tumor. Helium ions specifically may offer improved dose conformity, reduced lateral scattering, and enhanced biological effectiveness compared to other particle types, per the release. The idea behind combining both proton and helium capability into one upright system is that physicians could eventually choose between the two based on the specific characteristics of a patient's disease.
Michael Marash, a P-Cure representative quoted in the release, said helium therapy may represent a major advancement and that the alliance aims to establish clinical evidence for helium ions as a treatment option. Steven J. Frank, speaking on behalf of MD Anderson, said the collaboration will evaluate an innovative platform and help advance understanding of helium ion therapy's potential role in cancer treatment.
Still, the broader scientific record on helium ion radiotherapy remains thin. A snippet from a study listed on PubMed notes that systematic studies of helium ion radiotherapy are scarce, underscoring why MD Anderson and P-Cure frame this as research meant to build an evidence base rather than a finished product ready for clinics.
A Conditional First, Not a Done Deal
The release is careful to frame the North American milestone as conditional. If the collaboration succeeds, the companies say, it would represent the first helium particle system in North America — language that keeps the claim tied explicitly to the success of the research effort rather than presenting it as already achieved. No schedule, budget, or facility location for such a system has been disclosed in the announcement.
P-Cure's upright architecture is designed to reduce the size, cost, complexity, and infrastructure requirements typically associated with particle therapy facilities, which often rely on large rotating gantries. The company, headquartered in Jerusalem, develops and provides compact synchrotron-based adaptive proton therapy systems, and its systems are already in clinical use internationally. P-Cure received FDA clearance for its Adaptive Proton Therapy Solution in the United States back in April 2023, according to ITN Online.
The company's upright, seated treatment approach has already produced early clinical data elsewhere. A February announcement distributed via PRNewswire described prospective results from a Hadassah Medical Center study of gantry-less upright proton therapy used for thoracic re-irradiation. An interim analysis in that study included ten patients with recurrent thoracic malignancies, most diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, all of whom had previously received definitive radiotherapy; the announcement reported that all patients completed treatment without interruption and that local control within the re-irradiated volume was 100% at three months.
Helium's Limited Clinical History
Helium ion therapy itself is not entirely new to medicine, though its clinical use has been rare. The Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center in Germany treated its first patient with helium ion therapy in July 2021, a treatment that, per a press release from RaySearch Laboratories, marked the first clinical application of helium beams since their earlier use at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory between 1975 and 1993. That same Heidelberg treatment was also described as a world first for helium ion therapy using the spot scanning, or pencil-beam scanning, technique. Documentation from Heidelberg University's clinical center separately describes the facility as Europe's first combined treatment center using both protons and heavy ions for radiation therapy.
Under the new agreement, MD Anderson is eligible to receive payments tied to the achievement of certain clinical milestones and commercial sales, according to the release. The hospital has also disclosed what it calls an institutional conflict of interest tied to its relationship with P-Cure, saying that relationship will be managed according to a UT MD Anderson Institutional Conflict of Interest Management and Monitoring Plan. Specific payment amounts and the detailed controls within that monitoring plan were not disclosed.
MD Anderson, based in Houston, has been ranked No. 1 for cancer in U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals rankings and has been named one of the nation's top two hospitals for cancer every year since the rankings began in 1990. The center became one of the nation's first NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers in 1971 and receives an NCI Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Institutes of Health, grant P30 CA016672.
