AI Article Synopsis
- Boron-containing compounds like 4-borono-phenylalanine (BPA) are used in Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) to target and destroy cancer cells via neutron irradiation, which triggers nuclear reactions in boron-rich materials.* -
- This study models the thermal neutron cross-section of BPA to examine how boron absorption competes with hydrogen scattering, aiming to optimize BNCT treatment by reducing the latter's effect.* -
- The findings indicate that fluorinated versions of BPA enhance neutron capture efficiency, offering a potential improvement for BNCT, while also facilitating monitoring and pharmacokinetic studies with fluorine-based imaging techniques.*
Article Abstract
Background: Boron-containing compounds, such as 4-borono-phenylalanine (BPA) are used as drugs for cancer treatment in the framework of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT). Neutron irradiation of boron-rich compounds delivered to cancer cells triggers nuclear reactions that destroy cancer cells.
Purpose: We provide a modeling of the thermal neutron cross section of BPA, a drug used in Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT), to quantify the competing contributions of boron absorption against hydrogen scattering, for optimizing BNCT by minimizing the latter.
Methods: We perform the experimental determination of the total neutron scattering cross section of BPA at thermal and epithermal neutron energies using neutron transmission measurements. We isolate the contribution related to the incoherent scattering by hydrogen atoms as a function of the neutron energy by means of the Average Functional Group Approximation, and we calculate the probability for a neutron of being absorbed as a function of the neutron energy both for BPA and for its variants where either one or all four aromatic hydrogen atoms are substituted by F, and both for the samples with natural occurrence or enriched concentration of B.
Results: While referring to the already available literature for in vivo use of fluorinated BPA, we show that fluorine-rich variants of BPA increase the probability of neutrons being captured by the molecule. As the higher absorption efficiency of fluorinated BPA does not depend on whether the molecule is used in vivo or not, our results are promising for the higher efficiency of the boron neutron capture treatment.
Conclusions: Our results suggest a new advantage using fluorinated compounds for BNCT, in their optimized interaction with neutrons, in addition to their already known capability to be used for monitoring and pharmacokinetics studies using F-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance or in F-Positron Emission Tomography.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mp.16802 | DOI Listing |
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