Hefei's Zhongke Ion Raises 600 Million Yuan for Proton Cancer Therapy

Zhongke Ion (中科离子), a company based in Hefei, China, has received 600 million yuan in investment. At the current exchange rate, that is roughly $80–85 million. The round comes as its equipment has already reached the clinic. On August 7, 2026, at the Hefei Ion Medical Center, a lung cancer patient completed a two-week course of proton therapy consisting of 10 sessions. The irradiation ran on a domestically built superconducting cyclotron system. Before that, the center had used imported equipment.

A clinic instead of a presentation

Proton therapy is considered one of the most precise methods of radiation treatment. Protons deposit most of their dose at a specific depth and cause almost no damage to tissue behind the tumor. For the lungs, where the heart and esophagus sit nearby, this matters. But such precision demands heavy, expensive infrastructure: an accelerator, a beam transport system and a rotating gantry.

Zhongke Ion developed its accelerator in-house, and it serves as the core of the whole system. It is the most complex and most expensive part of the installation. Cyclotrons like this were previously bought abroad for Chinese clinics. The first clinical trial on the company's own hardware shows that it has moved from the lab stage to working with patients.

What the "artificial sun" has to do with it

The technological origins of the system go back to Hefei's fusion program, which China calls the "artificial sun." Fusion reactors need powerful superconducting magnets, and that experience carries over to medical accelerators. A strong magnetic field makes a cyclotron more compact, and it has to fit inside a hospital building.

The available portion of the material shows the following:

• round size: 600 million yuan;
• type of system: a superconducting cyclotron complex for proton therapy;
• clinical trial: 10 sessions over two weeks, with lung cancer the first case described;
• site: the Hefei Ion Medical Center, which previously used imported equipment;
• accelerator developer: Zhongke Ion, Hefei.

The available excerpt does not name the investors, the company's valuation or the price of the system. There is also no data on treatment efficacy: one patient and one course do not show a clinical result.

A market that has so far been import-dependent

Proton centers are very expensive, and a few Western and Japanese manufacturers split the global market. With a growing cancer burden, China currently has a limited number of such systems. If a domestic system turns out to be noticeably cheaper than foreign equivalents and can pass regulatory approval, it would change the economics of building new centers. For now, though, such conclusions remain a hypothesis.

What to watch next

First: regulatory approval of the system and the move from a trial to routine production use. Second: the number of patients treated and published data on dose accuracy and side effects. Third: the price of the system and its maintenance costs, since these determine whether regional hospitals can afford such installations. For investors and medical equipment makers, the main indicator here is confirmation that technology from fundamental physics is becoming commercial medical products. The company will apparently spend the 600 million yuan on scaling up production and on new clinical sites.