BNCT - Boron Neutron Capture Therapy

Our group has been privileged to be part of the big Finnish consortium, who is studying boron carriers to treat cancers with a neutron beam. The consortium's head is the University Lecturer, Adj. Prof. Filip Ekholm from the University of Helsinki, and several research groups have been given their input to this big project, including Prof. Jarkko Rautio's group from the UEF, A. Prof. Anu J. Airaksinen's group from the University of Turku and Academy Research Fellow Mirkka Sarparanta's group from the University of Helsinki, to name few. We recently published our first paper, in which we studied glucoconjugates as boron carriers to inhibit the growth of head and neck cancers. These glucoconjugates are using glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) for their delivery into the cancer cells and due to the very high expression of GLUT1 in cancer cells, it is assumed that the given compounds are mainly delivered to these target sites. With a neutron accelerator, the neutron beam radiation is then applied for the tumor site. When the non-radioactive boron-10 (10B) absorbs or captures the neutron it starts to emit high-energy particles that are able to kill the cancer cells, also the adjacent cancer cells that have enough accumulated 10B. Thus, this therapy is able to spare the healthy cells, if 10B atoms are not sufficiently accumulated into them. With the future prospective, when these neutron accelerators are getting more and more common in the hospitals, we believe that this methodology can be one of the most promising ones in the treatment of cancer, at least in the case of the very challenging cancers, such as different brain tumors. 

Here is the link for our first publication and we expect another one coming up soon!