Calculation of DNA Damage in the Tumor Cell on Boron Neutron Capture Therapy

Abstract

The boron neutron capture therapy technique has been appealing to advance the technical and medical development of aspects of malignant tumors. The concept of the method has been aimed at dose contribution by secondary particles for targeted tumor sites while neutron beams do not have enough radiation effects to damage healthy cells with an advantage. This study focused on calculating the dose deposition of secondary particles from nuclear reactions between various mono-energetic neutrons and ¹⁰B with different concentrations. In this simulation, we carried out the single-cell model of human glial tumors with several potential distributions of boron nanoparticles as L-BPA. The resulting absorbed boron dose was more significant than the dose from other particles on the lower part of epithermal neutron energy ranges when higher boron concentration. Accordingly, we estimated the DNA damage in the cell geometry with the sphere and ellipsoid caused by the secondary particles using the GEANT4-DNA toolkit, respectively. The findings highlight the importance of precise dose calculations of high LET particles and considering secondary particle effects when evaluating the efficacy of BNCT in tumor treatment.