PROTON beam therapy is coming to the North West, and an East Lancashire man has been the driving force behind it. JASON KAYLEY got an exclusive tour behind the scenes of the new £130million facility from the man who has been at the forefront of this pioneering project.

TO describe a tour around the new Proton Beam Therapy Centre as life-changing is an understatement.

The £130million project at The Christie in Manchester will be the first of its kind in the UK when it becomes fully operational in the autumn.

Jason Dawson, from Oswaldtwistle, the Proton Beam Therapy Director of Capital at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, is the lead figure in creating this pioneering facility.

Mr Dawson, who has worked at the hospital for 10 years, has brought together a team of experts to create an engineering masterpiece that will not only save lives but save families from expensive, stressful and potentially dangerous travel abroad for treatment.

Proton beam therapy uses beams of protons (sub-atomic particles) to achieve the same cell-killing effect as conventional radiotherapy. A particle accelerator is used to speed up the protons to two-thirds the speed of light. These accelerated protons are then beamed into cancerous cells, killing them.

But unlike conventional radiotherapy, the beam of protons stops once it hits the cancerous cells and results in much less damage to surrounding tissue.

This form of treatment is used for some brain tumours, in the head and neck area, near the base of skull or spine, some soft tissue tumours or in the pelvis.

Once operational it will treat around 750 people a year.

The treatment hit the headlines in 2014 when the parents of Ashya King, then just five, were detained by police for taking him from a British hospital to seek the treatment abroad.

Brett and Naghemeh King had disagreed with doctors at Southampton General Hospital over how to treat their son Ashya’s medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumour.

The NHS did not offer proton beam therapy in the UK at the time and had refused to refer them abroad, prompting the parents to travel to a specialist centre in Europe themselves.

Former Moor End Primary and Rhyddings High School pupil Mr Dawson is delighted to have had the facility handed over to The Christie and is looking forward to getting patients in and start saving lives.

He said: “I am very lucky to have had the opportunity to be involved in such a pioneering project.

“To think that I’ve led the project that will change the life of thousands of people makes me feel very proud.

“There are other centres across the globe who offer this treatment but a High Energy proton centre has never been built in the UK. This is unique. We’ve had no blueprint to follow, we’ve had to overcome so many challenges but what we have created is amazing.

“We were selected as one of only two centres to carry out this work, so the pressure was really on and I can’t thank the team enough for their dedication.

At the centre of the whole operation is the cyclotron - the particle accelerator. The machine has been nicknamed “Emmeline” after Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the British Suffragette movement, who hailed from Manchester.

The cyclotron, which was transported from Germany, feeds three treatment gantries, huge machines that can rotate around the patients in the treatment room to be able to best target the tumour. One gantry can get used at a time while patients are prepped in the other two rooms, and exposure will last as long as an x-ray.

The building’s list of technical features is almost as extraordinary as proton beam treatment itself.

To meet the building’s gigantic energy needs, a new sub-station was built, which provides an equivalent amount of power to that needed to run the nearby Trafford Industrial Park.

To contain the radiation, the concrete walls are up to six metres thick.

And despite being just three storeys high, the building comprises of 20,000m³ of concrete with 1,700 tonnes of reinforcement provided by reinforcing steel bars up to 100mm thick.

Through this, 10km of services pipework has been carefully embedded. The concrete itself weighs 48,000 tonnes, the equivalent of two aircraft carriers.

“Everything is bespoke and the feat of engineering to put this together has been staggering,” Mr Dawson added. “But once we are able to start treating patients, it will all have been worthwhile.

“The project has been a real partnership and to complete on time and under budget is incredibly pleasing.”

And what makes this truly unique is there is a fourth gantry, which is used for research and development to ensure The Christie continues its long history of battling the disease.

And as the final touches are made to the centre, Mr Dawson is looking forward to seeing the project complete.

He said: “It’s been a real labour of love over the past five years. I’m very proud of my Oswaldtwistle roots and this will help people in my home town, across Lancashire, the north west and beyond for many years to come. It’s a fantastic achievement.

“The extra touches we’ve added give some luxury and patients have been consulted to make sure it has been designed with them in mind.

“It’s been an incredible journey for me and the team I’ve led but it’s one I’m so delighted to have made.”