A 7-year-old boy named Stephen De La Torre has become the first patient in the Bay Area to undergo proton therapy since the 1990s at the Stanford Medicine Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California. The treatment, which involves a beam of charged particles that travel through the skin to deposit cancer-killing radiation in a tumor, is a precise tool that shrinks tumors while limiting side effects by sparing healthy parts of the body from harmful radiation.
A 7-year-old boy named Stephen De La Torre has become the first patient in the Bay Area to undergo proton therapy since the 1990s at the Stanford Medicine Cancer Center in Palo Alto , California .
The treatment, which involves a beam of charged particles that travel through the skin to deposit cancer-killing radiation in a tumor, is a precise tool that shrinks tumors while limiting side effects by sparing healthy parts of the body from harmful radiation. Proton therapy is especially useful for children, who are sensitive to radiation, and others with tumors in hard-to-reach locations.
The treatment is less common than traditional X-ray radiation, which enters the body and exits the other side, exposing healthy tissue and organs. However, with protons, the radiation stops at the tumor, making it a more targeted approach. The proton system used at Stanford Medicine is a technological breakthrough, experts said, as it has been reduced in size from as big as a three-story building to fitting in one room.
This 'game-changer' was developed by Mevion Medical Systems, a Massachusetts medical technology company, and cost Stanford $33 million. The new device was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025 and has been shown to be effective in clinical settings. Patient Stephen De La Torre, 7, was fitted with a custom-made mask to immobilize his head for the proton cancer treatment at Stanford Medicine Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California, on Wednesday, June 10, 2026.
The boy's family and doctors exited the room as the humming machine lowered a ring around his body. Behind him, hidden from view, was the world's smallest proton particle accelerator. The treatment is painless, but the boy was initially disconcerted during his first sessions in early June, said his mother, Tricia LaBrasca.
Technicians used a custom mask to keep his head in place for the radiation beam, but for the boy, 'his only frame of reference is scary movies, or whatever,' she said. So, a staffer painted it with the red, white and gold of the San Francisco 49ers. Watching with monitors in a nearby room, the care team aligned the boy's position with advanced CT scans of his brain.
The particle accelerator, six feet wide, sped protons in a circular route nearly to the speed of light. The beam of proton radiation traveled out of a nozzle and into the tumor in his brain. Over days and weeks, the goal of the treatment was to destroy the DNA in cancer cells making up De La Torre's tumor.
Radiation treatment is a balancing act: it also damages healthy tissue near tumors, which can cause side effects and injuries, like scarring or swelling on organs. Specialists are careful when using radiation with children, who may live longer and require radiation again in the future
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