{"entity":{"id":"cnao-pavia","kind":"institution","name":"National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO), Pavia","aka":["Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica","Fondazione CNAO","CNAO"],"tldr":"Italy's national particle therapy centre, near Milan, and the only one in the country that treats tumours with both protons and carbon ions; the national health service has paid for it since the 2010s.","summary":"CNAO's own history traces it to a May 1991 report by the physicists Ugo Amaldi and Giampiero Tosi proposing a hadron therapy centre, to the TERA foundation set up in 1992, and to a CERN study (PIMMS) completed in 2000 from which the CNAO synchrotron design descends. Umberto Veronesi, as health minister from 2000, decided to fund it; the CNAO foundation was created in 2001, building began with a first stone on 5 March 2005, and the centre was inaugurated on 15 February 2010. The site gives the capital cost of construction as 135 million euros and the three years of clinical trials required by the health ministry as 37.1 million euros, after which the centre gained its CE mark. Its home page states that hadron therapy has been reimbursable by the national health service since 1 January 2014; its history page states that hadron therapy entered the national essential levels of care (LEA) in 2017.\n\nThe centre describes itself as the only facility in Italy able to deliver both protons and carbon ions, and one of six in the world, with a synchrotron ring 80 metres long and 25 across. It treats tumours that are inoperable or resistant to conventional radiotherapy, in the skull base, head and neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis, limbs and spine and in children, and states that widely metastatic disease is not an indication. Its institutional participants include the national nuclear physics institute INFN and the universities of Pavia and Milan.","asOf":"2026-11-03","links":[{"label":"Fondazione CNAO","url":"https://fondazionecnao.it"},{"label":"History of CNAO (Italian)","url":"https://fondazionecnao.it/storia"},{"label":"Treatable tumours (Italian)","url":"https://fondazionecnao.it/patologie-trattabili"}],"tags":["particle-therapy","carbon-ion","proton"],"related":["alleanza-contro-il-cancro","aifa"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["carbon-ion","proton-therapy"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"city":"Pavia","country":"IT","lat":45.2012,"lng":9.1441,"institutionType":"cancer-center","website":"https://fondazionecnao.it","programs":["Carbon-ion therapy","Proton therapy","Paediatric solid tumours","Radiobiology and clinical research"]},"route":"/institutions/cnao-pavia/","neighbours":{"institution":[{"id":"alleanza-contro-il-cancro","kind":"institution","name":"Alleanza Contro il Cancro (ACC)","route":"/institutions/alleanza-contro-il-cancro/"},{"id":"aifa","kind":"institution","name":"Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA)","route":"/institutions/aifa/"}],"technology":[{"id":"carbon-ion","kind":"technology","name":"Carbon-ion therapy","route":"/technologies/carbon-ion/"},{"id":"proton-therapy","kind":"technology","name":"Proton therapy","route":"/technologies/proton-therapy/"}],"person":[{"id":"umberto-veronesi","kind":"person","name":"Umberto Veronesi","route":"/people/umberto-veronesi/"}]}}