Is this it? Has the cure for cancer been found? New proton therapy offers great hope to cancer patients

Proton therapy directly targets cancer cells, leaving the healthy tissue unharmed.

The battle to cure cancer is one that has been continuously fought for decades. Chemotherapy, radiation, monoclonal antibodies and surgery have all had their fare share in beating cancer.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Chemotherapy has had many success stories, but this is at a cost of destroying healthy tissue along with the cancer cells, according to CNN. Health practitioners desperately want something that hits the cancer directly with little to no damage to the rest of the body.

Yves Jongen, Belgium engineer and nuclear physicist may have the best weapon against cancer.

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He has designed a new therapy that targets cancer with proton radiation. He claims his therapy is precise and doesn't come with a list of side effects.

A two-meter thick concrete bunker, serving as a radiation shield, encases the cyclotron machine that produces proton beams to treat cancer patients.

"In this space we accelerate the protons and we give them a higher and higher velocity until they reach two thirds of the speed of light -- that's 200,000 km per second and this acceleration takes place in the shape of a spiral," Jongen said to CNN. "That's needed if you want to be able to penetrate one foot into the body of a patient."

A powerful dose of targeted radiation then kills only the cancerous cells. "It does a lot less collateral damage to the patient," Jongen said. "That's the great thing about proton therapy."

Although this newly innovative form of cancer treatment sounds promising, it has a couple downfalls. Some types of cancer, like Leukemia, are not localized, so there's no where to shoot the radiation bullet. The device also costs $125 million to put in a treatment center.

"It would be much less expensive making it more possible for a hospital to afford it -- a smaller system can already treat a relatively large number of patients per year," explained Jongen.

Currently only 1 percent of cancer patients are being treated with the proton therapy, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it is a highly-sought, working method to treat cancer.

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"I have a number of letters from parents of young kids saying if it had not been for this treatment we would have lost our kid," Jongen said to CNN. "That's something I really cherish. When I feel a bit depressed, for whatever reason, I go back to those letters and they are very exciting."

Jongen expects the proton therapy marked to greatly expand by 2018, making it available to more cancer patients.

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