A company that uses technology developed by scientists working on the large hadron collider at the CERN facility in Switzerland has moved a step closer to creating a low-cost proton beam treatment for cancer.

AIM-listed Advanced Oncotherapy PLC (LON:AVO) said it is now testing the Proton Source for its LIGHT system in situ in France. Once the testing process has been complete it will be shipped to AVO’s facility in Geneva.

LIGHT is an acronym given to the firm’s Linac Image Guided Hadron Technology.

Cheaper and smaller than the current units, which are almost prohibitively expensive, the LIGHT system has the ability to propel protons at the speed of the larger machines.

Proton beam therapy is expected to emerge as the go-to treatment for tumours as the price of the technology comes down. It uses the aforementioned protons to pinpoint tumours more precisely. This limits the damage caused by radiation to surrounding tissue and organs as well as offering patients higher disease-free survival rates. 

The piece of the kit that accelerates the protons was licensed from CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, which is currently hunting the "God particle".

Of the latest developments, AVO boss Michael Sinclair said: "The team at Advanced Oncotherapy have been working hard in progressing the construction of our first LIGHT system and I am delighted that we remain on track and delivering to the timeline that we originally presented to shareholders in November 2014.

“Our LIGHT system combines some remarkable technology and it is very pleasing to see it continue to take shape - once completed we will have developed a game-changing type of proton therapy that will allow this specialist treatment to be available for cancer patients in a much more effective and affordable way."