Establishment of multi-target neutron capture therapy with multiple boron drugs for brain tumours

Abstract

Surgery can be used to remove cancerous tumours but isn't perfect. It entails risks for the patients, bits of the tumour can be missed and there are parts of the body that can't be reached. Radiation and pharmaceuticals provide additional treatment methods but aren't completely accurate. A new method of radiation therapy called Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) may provide improved accuracy. Associate Professor Shinji Kawabata, Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Japan, is interested in BNCT, particularly for treating brain tumours. He and his team introduced BNCT using a nuclear reactor in 2002 and the researchers have been actively working on it since then. The researchers have shown that the treatment is safe and effective. Kawabata conducted a multi-institutional clinical trial in which he set out to compare BNCT against existing standard treatments and found that BNCT significantly exceeded this benchmark. He and his team also found that multi-target BNCT, which uses multiple types of target drugs at once and irradiates a single neutron, outperforms single agents in terms of usefulness and safety. At the moment, Kawabata and the team are refining the treatment based on the multi-treatment type protocols and want to expand the treatment to encompass other types of cancer.