Upcoming colloquium focuses on particle therapy for cancer treatment

George Coutrakon, a professor in the School of Medicine at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, will lead a colloquium on proton beam therapy for cancer patients at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27, in Room 200 of Faraday West.

Coutrakon is doing consulting work for NIU, which last month received more than $3 million in funding to begin planning for a proposed particle therapy treatment and research program.

The university currently operates the NIU Institute for Neutron Therapy at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. In many types of cancer, proton and neutron therapies are advantageous over traditional forms of radiation. Proton therapy offers great advantages for pediatric patients, in particular.

NIU, which frequently collaborates with both Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory, has been building a program in medical physics and related health practices. The university is proposing a new treatment program that would include proton therapy, greatly expanding the range of treatable diseases.

“The proposed particle therapy program would enhance existing research programs at NIU and also could open many new avenues of research and public service for NIU faculty and students,” Provost Raymond Alden said. “We strongly encourage interested faculty to attend this colloquium to learn more about particle therapy.”

Coutrakon’s talk will focus on the physics of proton energy deposition in the patient and the planning systems that have allowed its use for many tumor sites.

“George is an accomplished medical physicist, and he will be describing the many opportunities that a new proton program would generate across the NIU curriculum, from physics and engineering to nursing and therapy,” said NIU Presidential Science Adviser Gerald Blazey. “This is the first in a series of venues to describe those opportunities to the university community.”

In 1986, Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) contracted Fermilab to design and build the world’s first hospital-based proton treatment system. Loma Linda opened its proton therapy medical center in 1990. Coutrakon was a key player in the development of that first proton treatment system.

He received his doctoral degree in high energy physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1983 and worked as a research associate at Fermilab until 1987. Using his experience in radiation detectors at Fermilab, Coutrakon worked with the medical physics team to build and test the first proton beam delivery systems at Fermilab and Loma Linda until proton treatment began. 

Since that time, he has been director of the proton accelerator operations group at LLUMC, where he conducts research in proton dosimetry, scanning proton pencil beams for high precision radiation therapy, and low dose rate experiments for the NASA radiation biology program.

He has taught graduate courses in proton therapy accelerators and beam optics at the U.S. Particle Accelerator School as well as radiation physics classes for physicians and radiation technology students at LLUMC.

Coutrakon also is a member of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and has consulted for several proton facilities, the International Committee on Radiation Units and the National Institutes of Health.

Today there are five proton therapy programs operating in the United States and several more in the planning stages.

10-16-06