Cancer-blaster shoots for Valley

Local developer Gopal Kris Kapoor is backing a New Jersey company's plans to build a $200 million outpatient cancer treatment center and hotel complex in Allentown that offers a type of radiation therapy available at only three major medical centers in the country.

The company, Proton Therapy Inc. of Marlton, N.J., is a for-profit business named after the type of cancer treatment now offered only at university medical centers in California, Indiana and Massachusetts and at select sites in Japan and Europe.

Proton therapy's potential advantage over conventional radiation therapy is that it can deliver higher doses of radiation with more precision and fewer side effects to cancers that are slow-growing or risky to treat, such as those in the prostate, head and neck.

The sites under consideration were not disclosed, but an economic development official said the lots are privately owned and outside center city.

If built, the complex could create more than 200 jobs. It would be the first privately owned and operated free-standing proton therapy center in the United States.

''This could put the Lehigh Valley on the map of the world for cancer treatment,'' said Kapoor, noting that South America and many countries elsewhere have no proton therapy centers.

Kapoor, who lives in Hanover Township, Northampton County, once owned the Fuller Co., a worldwide supplier of heavy equipment for the cement industry. He made millions on the sale of the Catasauqua company in 1989 and on subsequent land development.

Although Proton principals have been discussing the plans privately with local government, economic development and hospital officials for months, it could be three years or more before patients receive cancer-zapping treatments at the center.

Such a major undertaking involves state and local approvals, considerable capital and complex construction that leave the project open to questions about cost, need and means of developing it privately.

''I don't know how they can do it without a hospital affiliation,'' which presumably has more resources and medical expertise at hand, said Len Arzt, executive director of the National Association for Proton Therapy in Silver Spring, Md. ''There are a lot of 'ifs' out there, but more power to them.''

Constrained by cost, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania has been trying to open a proton therapy center in Philadelphia for 10 years. And cancer specialists providing traditional radiation therapy in the Lehigh Valley question the need and expense of added technology and treatments.

But Kapoor, Proton's vice chairman, and other company directors are confident they have the money, expertise and support to break ground by 2006.

Proton applied to Pennsylvania for $10 million to $15 million in grants or other tax-free incentives, according to Frank Hess of Delanco, N.J., a retired financial adviser and Proton's secretary/treasurer. If they are granted, he said, Proton could save $6 million on the $80 million equipment and millions more in property taxes.