• Arizona

    Mayo Clinic Cancer Center Topping off Ceremony

What: Mayo Clinic Cancer Center Preview/Construction Milestone Event

Mayo Clinic in Arizona's CEO Wyatt Decker, M.D., and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton will preview Mayo Clinic's upcoming Cancer Center and how the new center will impact patients and the greater Phoenix community.

When: Thursday, June 27, from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m.

Where: Mayo Clinic's Phoenix campus, east of the Mayo Clinic Specialty Building, 5777 East Mayo Blvd, Phoenix (campus located on Mayo Blvd and 56th street

Visuals: The last piece of steel will be raised and placed onto the
Cancer Center building that is under construction; artist renderings of the building.

Quotes: Event will offer sound byte opportunities from presenters:

  • Wyatt Decker, M.D., Vice President, Mayo Clinic, CEO, Mayo Clinic in Arizona
  • Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton
  • Phoenix City Councilman Jim Waring
  • Willam Stone, M.D., Chair, Mayo Clinic Clinical Practice Committee
  • Richard Gray, M.D., Mayo Clinic Cancer Clinical Practice Subcommittee

Interviews: Available with Mayo Clinic leadership; Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and Phoenix City Councilman Jim Waring

Mayo Clinic's new Cancer Center is one step closer to reality.

On Thursday morning, June 27, the last piece of steel will go into place onto the newest building on Mayo Clinic's Phoenix campus — a building that will be the future Arizona home to Mayo Clinic's Cancer Center and the first proton beam therapy facility of its kind in the Southwest.

The press conference will preview for the first time what the new building will house and provide additional details on the construction.

Construction began on the building a year-and-a-half ago (December, 2011). Proton beam therapy, will reside on the lower levels of the building — taking up 165,000 square feet. That includes 100,000 square feet of space on the concourse level which will feature four state-of-the-art treatment rooms in addition to patient exam rooms, offices and public areas.

Above the concourse level will be an additional three floors (which equates to 215,000 square feet) dedicated to Mayo Clinic's full spectrum of Cancer Center specialty areas. The building will also feature a Breast Clinic, infusion area, pharmacy, cafeteria, patient education library in addition to an outpatient surgery area, GI endoscopy suite and Pain Clinic.

The new Cancer Center will begin to be occupied in early 2015, with proton beam therapy expected to begin by 2016.

Mayo Clinic's proton beam therapy program will be the first of its kind in the Southwest.

Mayo's program will employ the next generation of proton therapy — intensity-modulated proton beam therapy, using pencil beam scanning, which "paints" small groups of protons back and forth through a tumor. The protons fill the depth and contour of the tumor, allowing greater control of radiation doses, shorter treatment times and reduced side effects, compared with most other proton therapy systems.

Proton therapy has been shown to be beneficial in the treatment of many kinds of tumors, including head and neck, eye, central nervous system, lung, sarcomas, gastrointestinal and prostate. The precision of pencil beam scanning makes it especially beneficial in treating tumors adjacent to critical and sensitive organs, such as the brain, eye and spinal cord and will be beneficial to pediatric patients with cancer; a patient population Mayo Clinic's proton beam therapy program will also be treating.

The event will begin at 7:30 a.m. outside the northeast corner of the Mayo Clinic Specialty building. The event is expected to end by 8:30 a.m.

Contact Mayo Clinic's Julie Janovsky-Mason at
480-301-6173 or cell: 516-238-5022 to arrange interviews and b-roll requests.

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