Harley Street cancer firm Advanced Oncotherapy gets £24m boost

Advanced Oncotherapy has raised £24 million in funding to develop the UK’s first proton-beam therapy unit, in a boost for cancer sufferers.

Private-equity group Metric Capital will make £11 million available immediately and a further £13 million when Advanced Oncotherapy raises £25 million next year to develop a manufacturing base for its technology.

AIM-listed AVO is using technology developed by scientists working on the large hadron collider at the CERN facility in Switzerland to create a low-cost proton-beam treatment for cancer. Its shares climbed almost 5% on today’s news, which represents the final piece of the funding jigsaw for the Harley Street unit, which will be operated by Circle healthcare. The centre will open next year.

Proton-beam therapy is expected to emerge as the first-choice treatment for tumours as the price of the technology comes down.

The shortage of proton-beam therapy in the UK made headlines in 2014 when six-year-old Ashya King was taken to Prague by his parents for treatment of a brain tumour.