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- Not caught is not boron: targeted cancer treatment using nuclear reactions will become more accessible
Not caught is not boron: targeted cancer treatment using nuclear reactions will become more accessible
Russia is preparing to become one of the five countries that have mastered boron neutron capture therapy (BNRT), a high—tech method of destroying inoperable tumors. Physicists from Novosibirsk have developed and patented a solution that significantly simplifies the design of a medical accelerator. The new technology will make the promising method cheaper and more accessible to thousands of patients across the country. For more information about therapy— see the Izvestia article.
The first clinical trials of promising therapy in the Russian Federation
Scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS are improving a device for the advanced treatment of malignant tumors of the head and neck — boron neutron capture therapy (BNRT). This is a high-precision radiation therapy based on pre-saturation of tumor cells with boron isotopes and subsequent irradiation with a neutron beam. The main advantage of this approach is safety and selectivity: neutrons destroy only boron—labeled cells without affecting healthy tissues.
A similar technology is currently being investigated in only four countries, said Sergey Taskaev, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, chief researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, winner of the Challenge Prize.
—In one of these countries, China, they use the VITA accelerator neutron source, made at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences," the scientist said. — The institute recently supplied a similar neutron source to a clinic in Moscow, and Russia is soon to become the fifth country in the world to master the most high-tech treatment method proposed 90 years ago and capable of treating glioblastoma, large tumors of the neck and head, breast cancer, and melanoma.
Boron neutron capture therapy (BNRT) is a method of treating malignant tumors based on the selective destruction of cells by accumulating a stable boron-10 isotope in them and subsequent neutron irradiation. The technique was proposed in 1936, but due to the complexity of its implementation, it took almost a century for it to enter clinical practice. The use of BNRT in the world was limited to the use of a nuclear reactor as a neutron source.
Scientists from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, led by Sergey Taskaev, have created a compact accelerator source of neutrons of a new type. For creating a unique device, the scientist was awarded the National Prize in the field of future technologies "Challenge" in 2024. You can apply for the award in 2026 from February 25 to May 25.
The country's first clinical trials of the BNRT technique will be held at the N.N. Blokhin National Research Medical Center of Oncology of the Russian Ministry of Health in Moscow from April 2027 to November 2028 on 70 patients. However, scientists continue to refine the method to make it more accessible, cheaper, more accurate and better portable.
— We recently tested the idea of replacing pre-acceleration with pre-deceleration, when we do not accelerate the ions injected into the accelerator, but, on the contrary, slow it down. We have received a patent for this idea. The pre—braking functioned as a focusing lens and allowed not only to reduce unwanted heating of the uncooled diaphragms in the accelerator, but also to obtain a beam of protons with adjustable divergence, up to parallel," Sergei Taskaev told Izvestia.
What is the advantage of the Russian installation for BNZT
All these innovations will make it possible to eliminate a number of devices and technical means currently needed for conducting therapy sessions, Taskaev believes. With the targeted boron delivery drug used, boron—phenylalanine, the unit will allow treating patients with glioblastoma, large tumors of the neck and head, breast cancer, melanoma and a number of other tumors. This list may be expanded in the future.
— It will be a new installation. It will become more accessible: its size will become smaller, it will become simpler and cheaper. It is important for doctors that such a hardware system becomes more reliable. And for the patient, it is important that the exposure time will be shorter — 30-40 minutes (now about 45-60)," said the scientist.
The implementation of all these ideas will also make the installation more suitable for placement in cancer clinics.
Boron-neutron capture therapy is fundamentally different from classical radiation therapy in that it combines pharmacological and nuclear-physical selectivity, said Albert Rizvanov, head of the Personalized Medicine Center of Excellence at Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University. In standard photon or proton therapy, specialists control mainly the geometry and dose distribution of the beam. In BNRT, the tumor is first "labeled" with a drug containing the boron-10 isotope, which accumulates mainly in tumor cells, and then irradiated with neutrons.
— A nuclear reaction occurs already inside the target cell, releasing short-range particles with an extremely local range. This is the key difference from the proton knife," the scientist noted. — Proton therapy physically accurately adjusts the dose to the volume of the tumor, but does not distinguish between a tumor and a normal cell at the molecular level. BNRT also adds biological selectivity, which is especially important for infiltrative and difficult-to-treat tumors.
The fact that trials are starting in Russia is of strategic importance: we are talking about the country's entry into a narrow circle of countries where the method has been brought to clinical use. This is not only technological sovereignty in the field of high-precision cancer therapy, but also a chance to offer a new treatment option when standard approaches are limited in effectiveness or toxicity, Albert Rizvanov said.
Boron neutron capture therapy is a conceptually quite accurate method of treating tumors. Its advantage is the ability to destroy tumor cells at the microscopic level with minimal damage to surrounding tissues, the expert of NTI "Helsnet", a biologist, oncobioinformatician, founder of biomedtech startups BioAlg Corp. told Izvestia. and OncoUnite Dmitry Chebanov.
— Simplification of the accelerator design can reduce the cost and increase the availability of the technology. However, the main limitation of the method is not related to the device, but to biology: the possibility of selective accumulation of boron in the tumor," the specialist noted.
According to him, BNRT has not proven superior to modern proton or photon radiation therapy, and is likely to remain a niche tool for complex and radioresistant tumors, of which there are several percent in the population.
The new technology will make it possible to widely use the BNRT method for the treatment of the most aggressive and unresectable neoplasms, including the brain. Optimization of the accelerator design and achievement of the required radiation parameters will open up the possibility of widespread use of the technology in the treatment of neoplasms, said Oleg Kaganov, Head of the Department of Oncology at SamSMU, market expert at NTI "Helsnet", MD, Professor.
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