CYCLHAD: A French Facility Dedicated for Research and Treatment in Hadrontherapy

Abstract

Introduction For many years, the efforts to develop the hadrontherapy in Caen were made and supported by the Region Normandy. This hadrontherapy project, the Advanced Resource Center for Hadrontherapy in Europe (ARCHADE), described later, has led after many years of continuous efforts with partners to build its cornerstone: the CYCLHAD facility. CYCLHAD is a private company whose main shareholders are Ion Beam Applications (IBA; Louvain La Neuve), SAPHYN (a semipublic company based in Caen), and other private and clinical partners. The main purpose is to provide a cyclotrons-based facility for ion-beam therapy, starting with protons, and a multibeams research platform up to 400 MeV/n carbon beams. Thus, it is a dual-purpose building for healthcare and science. After an intensive planning period, at the end of 2014, CYCLHAD signed a contract awarded to the VINCI Group for the conception, construction, and maintenance of the building. At the same time, CYCLHAD contracted with IBA to acquire a ProteusOne® system together with its maintenance and operation. The construction of the main building started a year later and the beam was completed in September 2017. In parallel, IBA installed the Proteus-One®, which was delivered in May 2018. This proton facility is now clinically used by the anticancer center François Baclesse through an agreement to buy proton hours to CYCLHAD. The first treatment of a patient started in July 2018. To complete the facility, CYCLHAD appointed the Normandy Hadrontherapy company (NHa) to design and deliver the next cyclotronbased carbon facility (C400) through a contract signed in 2019. This new system, the Système de Recherche et de Traitement en Hadrontherapie (SRTH), will fit in the already built bunker (Figure 1), which is prepared to contain the C400 cyclotron accelerator and three beam-lines serving three clinical and experimental rooms (medical, radiobiology, and physics). First extracted beams are awaited around 2025–2026. CYCLHAD is also offering several hundreds of meter square of laboratories, which have to be equipped to host local groups and welcome visiting scientists.