Investment group SAH Global signed the UK branch of Qatar Islamic Bank to act as financial advisor for its upcoming $150 million proton therapy center in Qatar, the firms said last week. The Doha-based center, SAH Qatar Proton, is expected to be the first such center in the Middle East.

Qatar's Supreme Health Council granted SAH Global a license to build the proton therapy center in June 2010. Last November, SAH Global said it expected the center to treat 2,200 patients a year when it's up and running in the next three years.

Currently, Qataris seeking proton therapy cancer treatment -- which uses precise blasts of high-energy particles to scramble the DNA of cancer cells -- must go abroad, usually to either Europe, the United States or Japan. There are a little over 30 of the high-tech, multi-million dollar centers around the world, and only nine in the United States.

While the new center is being developed, SAH Global said it was also working with the Qatar National Cancer Society to use its subsidiary, SAH Care, to arrange for Qataris needing treatment to visit proton centers, mainly in the United States.

The in-development facility is part of Qatar's $605 million national cancer strategy, launched earlier this year by Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, vice chair of the health council. The strategy aims to position the country as a leader in cancer treatment services by 2016, allowing Qataris to remain at home for therapy and turning the country into a magnet for medical tourists abroad.

Thanks to its vast oil reserves, Qatar, a small nation about the size of Connecticut and with a population of around 1 million, has the highest per-capita income in the world, at $179,000, according to the CIA World Factbook.

There are an estimated 250,000 cancer cases in the Middle East annually, and around 145,000 cancer-related deaths, SAH Global said.

If it succeeds, the new center might not be the last one for SAH Global. The firm's chairman and CEO, Feroz Agad, said the Doha proton therapy center was only one of a "network" of such centers his firm intends to build.

"We are also in discussions with governments and potential local partners throughout the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and Europe for our satellite centers and we envisage this to be a long term relationship between SAH Global and our strategic partners, including QIB (UK)," he said in a statement.

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