Boron Neutron Capture Therapy: A New Generation of Targeted Charged-Particle Radiotherapy
Journal Title: Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research (BJSTR) - Year 2019, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
Radiation therapy plays an important role in standard cancer treatment. However, patients who are resistant to traditional radiation therapy or who have relapsed after conventional radiation therapy are often encountered in clinical practice. There is therefore a need for a new radiation therapy for this type of patient. Although boron neutron capture therapy is not a new concept of radiation therapy, due to technological breakthroughs and conceptual improvements at the start of the 21st century, this therapy, which covers multidisciplinary technologies, such as medical physics, atomic science and technology, boron-containing drug synthesis, radiobiology, and clinical oncology has advanced greatly, and has gradually matured to a clinically useful therapy for patients with cancer. This article provides a brief introduction to the latest breakthroughs and progress in this technology. Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is not a new concept in the field of radiation oncology. In the 1930s, not long after the British physicist James Chadwick (l891-1974, 1935 Nobel Prize winner of physics) proposed verification of the existence of neutrons, some researchers proposed that, after using thermal neutrons to irradiate boron-10 atom (in the natural world, four-fifths of boron is boron 11, while one-fifth is boron-10; boron-10 is non-radioactive isotope), boron-10 will be cleaved into two particles with high biological effects, namely an α particle (helium nucleus) and a lithium nucleus. These two biologically active particles not only have an excellent damaging effect on tumor tissue and DNA, but also have a range of effects, limited to 5-10μm (a normal cell diameter is about 20μm), and thus has little damaging effect on the surrounding normal tissues. Therefore, if a specific boron-10- containing drug can be administered selectively to the tumor cells, and a sufficient flux of thermal neutron radiation is applied, it can induce tumor destruction. Therefore, this concept has always been an ideal for targeted charged-particle radiation therapy in the field of clinical radiation oncology [1]. Although the principles seem to be ideal, the implementation of this concept in clinical practice still has many limitations and difficulties. The main technical limitation is whether boron-containing drugs can be specifically absorbed by tumors. The other is the high-throughput, quality, thermal neutron source. The source of the tumor dose involves a combination of a reactive boron-10 dose, the neutron dose, and the gamma ray dose. In the 1950s, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, neurosurgeon Dr. William Sweet led the world’s first BNCT clinical trial in human patients with malignant brain tumors (glioblastoma; WHO grade IV), using the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (BMRR) was conducted in Long Island, New York.
Authors and Affiliations
Yi Wei Chen, Fong In Chou, Wen Sheng Huang, Ko Han Lin, Po Shen Pan, Yu Cheng Kuo, Shih Ming Hsu, Jen Kun Chen, Chun Wei Wang, Kuan Hsuan Chen, Tien Li Lan, Jia Cheng Lee
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP585868
- DOI 10.26717/BJSTR.2019.13.002337
- Views 112
- Downloads 0
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