Catalytic activity imperative for nanoparticle dose enhancement in photon and proton therapy

Lukas R. H. Gerken, Alexander Gogos, Fabian H. L. Starsich, Helena David, Maren E. Gerdes, Hans Schiefer, Serena Psoroulas, David Meer, Ludwig Plasswilm, Damien C. Weber and Inge K. Herrmann ()
Additional contact information
Lukas R. H. Gerken: ETH Zurich
Alexander Gogos: ETH Zurich
Fabian H. L. Starsich: ETH Zurich
Helena David: ETH Zurich
Maren E. Gerdes: ETH Zurich
Hans Schiefer: Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen (KSSG)
Serena Psoroulas: Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)
David Meer: Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)
Ludwig Plasswilm: Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen (KSSG)
Damien C. Weber: Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)
Inge K. Herrmann: ETH Zurich

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Nanoparticle-based radioenhancement is a promising strategy for extending the therapeutic ratio of radiotherapy. While (pre)clinical results are encouraging, sound mechanistic understanding of nanoparticle radioenhancement, especially the effects of nanomaterial selection and irradiation conditions, has yet to be achieved. Here, we investigate the radioenhancement mechanisms of selected metal oxide nanomaterials (including SiO2, TiO2, WO3 and HfO2), TiN and Au nanoparticles for radiotherapy utilizing photons (150 kVp and 6 MV) and 100 MeV protons. While Au nanoparticles show outstanding radioenhancement properties in kV irradiation settings, where the photoelectric effect is dominant, these properties are attenuated to baseline levels for clinically more relevant irradiation with MV photons and protons. In contrast, HfO2 nanoparticles retain some of their radioenhancement properties in MV photon and proton therapies. Interestingly, TiO2 nanoparticles, which have a comparatively low effective atomic number, show significant radioenhancement efficacies in all three irradiation settings, which can be attributed to the strong radiocatalytic activity of TiO2, leading to the formation of hydroxyl radicals, and nuclear interactions with protons. Taken together, our data enable the extraction of general design criteria for nanoparticle radioenhancers for different treatment modalities, paving the way to performance-optimized nanotherapeutics for precision radiotherapy.

Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30982-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30982-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30982-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().