Johns Hopkins Medicine collaborated with Children’s National Hospital to open the Johns Hopkins National Proton Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital, providing proton technology for pediatric and adult cancer patients in the District of Columbia.
The proton center is part of the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore. Sibley houses the only proton center in the greater Washington, D.C. region with a dedicated pediatric team.
The proton collaboration with Children’s National Hospital represents an expansion of the earlier collaboration between Children’s and Johns Hopkins Medicine that established the pediatric radiation oncology program at Sibley, which treats a broad range of children’s cancers.
“We will be conducting groundbreaking research that will potentially help expand this technology for use in treating other types of cancers while at the same time helping improve the effectiveness of the proton treatments for the cancers currently most amenable to proton therapy,” Hasan Zia, interim president and CEO of Sibley Memorial Hospital, said in a statement.
The Johns Hopkins National Proton Center at Sibley will have a fully integrated research room, which will allow clinical, basic science, and medical physics faculty to advance clinical trial research, translational research, and technology development research in proton therapy. There, experts will lead efforts to study proton outcomes for sarcoma, gynecological tumors, pancreatic and liver tumors, lymph node cancers and tumors located near the heart and major blood vessels. In addition, the researchers will examine how the cancer cell-killing proton energy interacts with the cells and tissue surrounding the tumors.
Christina Tsien was appointed proton center medical director and Curtiland Deville will serve as the associate proton director, while maintaining his role as the clinical director for the Radiation Oncology Clinic at Sibley Memorial Hospital.
Through a strategic partnership with Howard University, the proton center will serve as an educational and training site for students enrolled in Howard’s medical physics program.
The first treatment room opened in October. The second room is scheduled to open in spring 2020, and the third room and fixed beam research room are scheduled to open in fall 2020.
