Status of the Hadrontherapy projects in Europe

Robert R. Wilson, an accelerator pioneer working with E.O. Lawrence at Berkeley, made the first proposal to treat cancer using proton beams more than 60 year ago (1946). In a first period, many accelerators built for nuclear and particle physics research have been progressively used to treat patients all over the word. It was the time of the hadrontherapy "first generation". As it has been the case for the evolution of the synchrotron radiation sources, starting with Loma Linda in 1990, a "second generation" of dedicated facilities has then been built to treat cancer without the constraints imposed to "parasitic users". The total number of patients treated with protons was about 10.000 in 1993 and 50.000 in 2006, the progression looks to be exponential. Hadrontherapy is today part of the medical business landscape, several companies sell turnkey protontherapy centres and the fight is started for carbon centres. The status of some hadrontherapy projects in Europe (existing facilities and future projects) as well as the industrial aspects will be presented in this framework.