55-metric ton Cyclotron installed at CT’s first proton therapy facility in Wallingford

Hartford Business Journal – Friday, October 31, 2025
By David Krechevsky

Just over a year after breaking ground on their new $75 million proton therapy center in Wallingford, Hartford HealthCare (HHC) and Yale New Haven Health marked a major milestone in the project on Friday.

As a small group of hospital, therapy center and town officials watched, a 55-metric-ton Cyclotron — the powerful particle accelerator at the heart of the new Connecticut Proton Therapy Center — was lifted from the ground by a 650-ton crane and lowered through the roof of the building, which is still under construction.

According to Peter Carbone, senior vice president for facility development for Proton International, the Cyclotron was lowered to the building’s first floor through holes specifically designed for the machine in the roof and upper floors.

“The overall installation has gone very, very well, even with (Thursday’s) weather,” he said.

The 25,000-square-foot Connecticut Proton Therapy Center, located at 600 Northrup Road in Wallingford, will be the state’s first. Proton beam therapy is a radiation treatment that delivers a precisely targeted beam of protons to disrupt and destroy tumor cells.

“For selected cancers, this is going to markedly improve the outcomes,” said Dr. Peter Yu, physician in chief for Hartford HealthCare’s Cancer Institute. “It will augment the ability to cure (a patient’s) disease and significantly reduce the long-term burden of side effects from therapy.”

There are just over 40 proton therapy centers in the U.S., but none in Connecticut. The closest centers are in New York and Massachusetts.

A second, $96 million proton therapy center has been approved to be constructed in Danbury.

HHC and YNHHS are principals of Connecticut Proton Therapy Center LLC, which originally formed in 2019. The LLC purchased the vacant 12 acres on Northrop Road, adjacent to the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, in July 2021 for $1.8 million.

Officials at the event Friday said the therapy center is on track to open next fall.

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