Since the 1954 the number of patients treated with proton beam has constantly grown exceeding today a total of 61 000 (source PTCOG, ptcog.web.psi.ch, data as of end of 2008). Other hadrons have been used to treat other 9000 patients: 5400 with carbon ions, 1100 with pions, and 2500 with helium, neon and other ions.

In the early years the particle therapy was performed exclusively in physics research laboratories. It was impossible to treat a large number of patients since rooms and beam time were shared with other scientific studies. Starting from the early 90’s new of hospital-based centers were built with accelerators were devoted fulltime to cancer treatment.

By the year 2012 the number of hadrontherapy centers in operation will double from today (source Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group -PTCOG- ptcog.web.psi.ch/newptcentres.html). In all these new centers the accelerators will be completely devoted to cancer therapy and this will increase exponentially the number of treated patients.

In order to cope with the needs of the particle therapy community (medical doctors, radiobiologist, physicist, experts in epidemiology and patient selection), a number of initiatives have started.  International collaborations, symposia and workshops on hadrontherapy are continuously taking place focusing on the latest research developments.

ENLIGHT, the European Network for Light ion Therapy, (www.cern.ch/enlight) maintains, since 2002, the link among the European universities, research institutions, and private companies for the promotion, the research, and the share of knowledge for the best practice in hadrontherapy. ADAM is part to ENLIGHT community sharing the experience of its team in particle accelerators tailored for cancer therapy.