Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation Signs Long-Term Agreement to be the Provider of Doctors for Northern Illinois Proton Treatment and Resea...( WEST CHICAGO Ill. Nov. 6 /- The N...),Health

WEST CHICAGO, Ill., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- The Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation (NMFF) will supply radiation oncologists to provide proton cancer treatment services at the Northern Illinois Proton Treatment and Research Center (NIPTRC), according to an agreement announced by NIPTRC and NMFF officials today.

NIPTRC, which is under construction 30 miles west of Chicago in the DuPage National Technology Park, will be a world-class, state-of-the-art proton cancer treatment and research center for the Chicago area and the upper Midwest. Northern Illinois University and NIPTRC officials broke ground for the center this summer after state officials approved the project, the first of its kind in the state.

"This agreement is the most significant milestone yet in our progress," said Ray Alden, chair of the NIPTRC board of managers and executive vice president and provost for Northern Illinois University, which is spearheading the project.

"Our center's patients will be treated by the best cancer treatment physicians in the area. Under this agreement, our core doctors will provide proton clinical services exclusively at NIPTRC and will also be full-time faculty members and/or researchers at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine," John Lewis, executive director of NIPTRC, said.

Dr. Bharat Mittal, M.D., chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, also hailed the agreement as a giant leap forward for Chicago-area patients who can benefit from the innovative, but as of yet inaccessible, cancer therapy.

"When proton beam therapy is an appropriate cancer treatment, patients in the Chicago area are forced to travel to one of the only five proton therapy centers currently operating in the U.S. because it is not yet available in Illinois. That's why we chose to work with NIPTRC to serve this need, and bring the first world-class proton treatment and research
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