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Boron neutron capture therapy used to need a nuclear reactor. These hospital-sized accelerators make the neutron beam instead, and in 2020 Japan approved the first one, with its boron drug, for head and neck cancers that have come back or cannot be removed.
A BNCT system accelerates protons to a few million electronvolts with a cyclotron or a linear accelerator, fires them at a beryllium or lithium target to knock out neutrons, then slows and filters those neutrons in a beam-shaping assembly so that mostly epithermal neutrons reach the patient. The patient has been given a boron-10 carrier, today the amino-acid analogue borofalan (Steboronine), which tumour cells take up through amino-acid transporters; when a slow neutron hits boron-10 the atom splits into an alpha particle and a lithium nucleus that travel about one cell diameter, so the cell that took up the boron is killed and its neighbours are spared. Treatment is typically a single session of under an hour.
Sumitomo Heavy Industries' cyclotron-based NeuCure system and Stella Pharma's borofalan were approved in Japan in March 2020 for unresectable locally advanced or recurrent head and neck cancer, the first regulatory approval for BNCT anywhere, and are used at the Southern Tohoku BNCT Research Center in Koriyama and the Kansai BNCT Medical Center in Osaka. Neutron Therapeutics installed its lithium-target nuBeam system at Helsinki University Hospital; Neuboron Medtech built the NeuPex system for the Xiamen Humanity Hospital in China; TAE Life Sciences sells the Alphabeam system; and several Japanese university programmes run Sumitomo and Mitsubishi-derived machines. Trials are testing glioblastoma, melanoma, angiosarcoma and recurrent tumours in previously irradiated tissue.
Against protons and carbon ions BNCT delivers its selectivity biologically rather than by beam shaping, so it can treat diffuse or previously irradiated disease that no external beam can safely target, in one session. Its limits are the small number of machines, dependence on how much boron each patient's tumour takes up, dose that is hard to measure directly, a shielded vault as large as a proton room, and evidence still confined to small single-arm studies.
A proton accelerator and neutron-producing target with a beam-shaping assembly deliver epithermal neutrons to a patient loaded with a boron-10 carrier; the boron-10 neutron capture reaction releases short-range alpha and lithium-7 particles inside the cells that took up the drug.
Query for this technology: (TITLE:"Accelerator-based BNCT systems" OR ABSTRACT:"Accelerator-based BNCT systems" OR TITLE:"NeuCure, nuBeam, NeuPex" OR ABSTRACT:"NeuCure, nuBeam, NeuPex") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Accelerator-based BNCT systems (NeuCure, nuBeam, NeuPex), not a curated reading list.
Shares Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST), Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, IMRT / IGRT (modern external beam), Melanoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife, CyberKnife, linac SRS), Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, IMRT / IGRT (modern external beam) and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Melanoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Proton therapy machines: cyclotrons, synchrotrons and single-room systems, Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, IMRT / IGRT (modern external beam) and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife, CyberKnife, linac SRS), Glioma & glioblastoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife, CyberKnife, linac SRS), Glioma & glioblastoma and the tag machines-wave2.
Shares Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, Melanoma and the tag machines-wave2.