Since 1992, the development of hadron therapy has been the main purpose of the Italian TERA FOUNDATION that, working with CERN, designed the protons and carbon ions synchrotron of the Italian National Centre for Oncological Hadron Therapy CNAO, built in Pavia with Government funds and INFN seminal contributions. In its projects TERA has profited from the collaboration with highly-competent CERN staff members and retirees. The CNAO has treated 5000 patients in the framework of the National Health Service. One can estimate that about 1000 lives have been saved with respect to what would have happened if the same patients had been treated with X-rays.
A dozen such centres are active in Japan, China and Europe but only half of them have both protons and carbon ions. The first American one is being built in Florida by Hitachi for Mayo Clinic.
On September 15, 2022, the 30-years of TERA were reviewed in a Symposium held at CERN. Fabiola Gianotti – Director General of the
world’s largest particle-physics laboratory – said “TERA has been extremely useful to CERN for two reasons: it gave the opportunity to advance and apply our technology and helped CERN to become more aware of the importance of the societal impact of our work. In
the early ’90s, this was not as evident at CERN as it is today”
Thirty years of the TERA Foundation. On 15 September 1992, the TERA Foundation was established in Novara, Italy. Exactly 30 years later, a symposium was held at CERN to review its contributions to hadron therapy.
