More than four years after receiving final approval and less than two years after breaking ground, the state’s two largest health systems held a grand opening Tuesday for Connecticut’s first proton therapy center in Wallingford.
The $75 million project, located at 932 Northrop Road, is a joint venture between Hartford HealthCare and Yale New Haven Health System.
The grand opening was attended by state and health system officials, who praised the two health systems for collaborating on the project.
“I would just simply like to say thank you to both institutions and everybody involved for the grace and the dedication and the commitment that everybody brought to the table to make this project happen,” said Chris Chandler, CEO of Proton International, which collaborated on the facility. “This is unique; it’s done right so that we didn’t have a proton war in this state.”
The 25,000-square-foot Connecticut Proton Therapy Center is the state’s first to use highly targeted radiological proton therapy, rather than X-rays, to treat cancer.
There are approximately 50 proton therapy centers nationwide, but none in Connecticut until now. The closest centers previously were in New York and Massachusetts.
A second, $96 million proton therapy center in the state has been approved to be constructed in Danbury.
The two health systems announced in April 2022 that they had secured final approval to build the center and initially indicated it would open in 2025 before it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The project began construction in October 2024.
HHC and YNHHS are principals of Connecticut Proton Therapy Center LLC, formed in 2019. The LLC purchased the vacant 12 acres on Northrop Road in July 2021 for $1.8 million.
Chandler conceded that “proton war” was a little strong to describe competing efforts to create such a facility, but said competing health systems elsewhere have been unable to collaborate.
“They did the right thing,” he said of Hartford HealthCare and Yale New Haven Health. “They did the right thing for healthcare, for cost control, efficiency and for the patient, which is ultimately what we’re all about.”
Other speakers during the event included Gov. Ned Lamont, state Comptroller Sean Scanlon, Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani, Hartford HealthCare President and CEO Jeff Flaks and Yale New Haven Health Interim President Pamela Sutton-Wallace.
Last October, a 55-metric-ton Cyclotron — the powerful particle accelerator at the heart of the new center — was lifted from the ground by a 650-ton crane and lowered through the roof of the building, which was still under construction at the time.
The Cyclotron was lowered to the building’s first floor through holes specifically designed for the machine in the roof and upper floors.
Proton therapy uses a high energy beam of protons to irradiate cancer. With proton beams, there is less entry, exit, and scattered radiation. That allows physicians to deliver higher doses of radiation to tumors, with less impact on healthy tissue and fewer side effects compared to other radiation therapies, the health systems said.
The therapy can be used against solid cancer tumors, such as tumors of the brain, central nervous system, eye, gastrointestinal tract, head and neck, liver, lung, prostate, spine and breast.
