A native Brazilian oncologist is at the forefront of a new era in treating cancer patients with cutting-edge proton therapy medical technology developed in Israel by P-Cure.
Dr. Marcel Fang was born in Santos-SP and has lived his entire life in São Paulo-Brazil. He graduated in Radiation Oncology from the Dr. Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho Cancer Institute in 2010.
For several years, he worked in leadership positions to expand a radiotherapy care model focused on high technical quality, aiming to bring advanced radiotherapy techniques to a segment of the Brazilian population that previously did not have this opportunity. After successfully disseminating this radiotherapy care model across several Brazilian states, he decided to move with his family to Israel.
For a year now, Dr. Fang has been working in the Department of Radiation Therapy at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. During the same period, Hadassah, in partnership with the Israeli company P-Cure, began offering proton therapy services using the P-Cure Solution to deliver the most targeted type of radiotherapy treatment to Israeli cancer patients. The center is the only proton facility available in the Middle East.
Proton therapy is a highly precise form of radiotherapy that uses a beam of protons, a charged particle, to destroy tumor cells in a highly precise and effective manner. Unlike photon beams (X-rays), which deposit their maximum energy upon entering the body, the proton beam delivers a very high dose to the tumor region and a minimal dose to healthy tissue areas. This feature allows for highly effective treatment with significantly reduced side effects.
“Bringing proton therapy to developing countries like Brazil is difficult because medical insurance reimbursement is insufficient to make the business model viable; however, the number of cancer patients is enormous. The main barrier to installing new technologies in countries like Brazil is cost-effectiveness. The Unified Health System (SUS) is saturated and has a very high cost. The supplementary health system in Brazil also has little reserve to expand procedures,” says Dr. Fang.
“Proton therapy has proven to be effective and has a low side effect profile, but previously available proton solutions made their cost-effectiveness the biggest impediment to new installations in Brazil. One of the main advantages of the P-Cure solution is that it is the most affordable on the market, but even more importantly, proton therapy allows treatment with fewer side effects, thus alleviating the burden on health systems over the years and allowing patients to return to their jobs more quickly,” says Dr. Fang.
In the last 10 years, there has been significant expansion of radiotherapy centers using proton therapy for more indications, thanks to the ability to protect healthy tissue. Proton therapy is currently used in the treatment of brain, spinal cord, head and neck, pediatric, ocular, liver, lung, prostate, breast, sarcomas, and other benign tumors.