Illinois will be getting its first proton therapy treatment center a little sooner than expected.

ProCure Treatment Centers said Thursday the $140 million center, located in Warrenville, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago, will open Oct. 19, months ahead of its original estimated opening in 2011.

The CDH Proton Center, a ProCure Center, will have taken two years to go from groundbreaking to accepting patients, ProCure said, beating by three months the previous construction times of the earlier "record holder," ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City, for those keeping track.

The 60,000-sq. ft. center was developed in collaboration with Central DuPage Hospital and Radiation Oncology Consultants and is expected to treat around 1,500 patients a year, ProCure said. It was originally scheduled to open in January.

There's something of a proton therapy boom going on now. Construction on a Manhattan center is set to begin in February, while ProCure hopes to open another New York center 40 miles away by 2012. And in Dayton, Ohio, two competing companies are looking to install the soon-to-be less rare centers: Optivus Proton Therapy Inc. plans a $170 million center while Kettering Medical Center plans an $80 million one, according to Med City News.

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