Tour of the new Mercy Proton Therapy Center & How the Cyclotron Delivers Cancer-Killing Treatment

The massive size of a cyclotron is too big for a single floor of a building and too big to be delivered through doorways, so construction of additional building space at Mercy Hospital St. Louis was required. Before the new building had a ceiling and roof, a crane lifted the 30,000 pound cyclotron several stories into the air before lowering it into its new home at the David C. Pratt Cancer Center in July of 2021. A year later, the Mercy Proton Therapy Center is now open.
The powerful cyclotron produces proton particles, generating high-energy beams of protons to tumors. The proton therapy at Mercy Hospital St. Louis uses pencil beam scanning technology that has a targeted delivery system. It’s called a pencil beam because it’s only a few millimeters wide, the width of a pencil.
Once delivered, protons interact with electrons in the atoms of cancer cells. A series of interactions result in damage to the DNA of the cancer cell, resulting in cell death and killing cancer.


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