Professor Karen Kirkby, of the University of Surrey, has been working hard in the past two years. Determined to help develop new charged particle beam therapies for cancer treatment, she's been involved with the assembly of the world's first vertical scanning nanobeam in a new building. And now she's almost ready to start an exciting series of experiments with cancer-killing protons.

The new facilities at the Surrey Ion Beam Centre are for basic research to underpin the next generation of proton therapy. Precisely aimed protons (a positively charged hydrogen ion) can destroy cancerous tissue without harming anything else.

The technique is used to treat eye cancers at the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology, although the UK still lags other countries in providing high-energy proton therapy facilities for other cancers (Beaming in on a deadly disease, August 10 2006).

Fitting out the new four-storey building with the 12-metre beamline has given Kirkby a big challenge. "We were hoping to have the beamline in operation by now," she says. "This is likely to be a problem when you are building equipment that is the first of its kind in the world and pushing the frontiers of technology. Some of the companies and groups we have been working with have been wonderful and helped us find innovative solutions."

Kirkby, who is a physicist, believes that the vertical scanning nanobeam (producing a 10-nanometre diameter beam of protons to scan individual cells) will offer a "world-class facility" for researchers. "It's also a collaboration between the clinical community and scientists working in the physical and biological sciences and engineers. We have particularly strong links with clinicians in the neuro-oncology group in Cambridge and the Gray Cancer Institute" - which is moving to the University of Oxford.

Why do these scientists feel so motivated to do this demanding research? The answer is simple: high-energy proton therapy has already saved the lives of UK patients like Jackie Jennings, who was successfully treated for chondrosarcoma, a rare cancerous tumour, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The new beamline will help understand how radiation affects living cells and show reactions between drugs and radiation. Its proton nanobeam is capable of scanning 100,000 cells per hour and, using experimental data, computational research will construct virtual tumours and devise new treatment strategies.

Kirkby is looking forward to some significant discoveries. "We've got plenty of exciting experiments lined up."

12 Length in metres of the beamline of the world's first vertical scanning nanobeam being assembled in a new Surrey facility