Therapeutic schemes in 177Lu and 90Y-PRRT: radiobiological considerations

The purpose of this work is to implement a radiobiological model to compare different treatment schedules for Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT) with 177Lu and 90Y. The principal radiobiological quantities were studied as a function of radionuclides, fractionation schemes, activity distribution in kidneys and tumor radiosensitivity.

Clinical data were used to derive representative absorbed doses for several treatment schemes for 177Lu-PRRT and for 90Y-PRRT and considered as input data for the radiobiological model. Both uniform and non-uniform activity distributions were considered for kidneys and cortex; for tumors a possible uptake reduction after each cycle and inter-patient radiosensitivity variability were investigated. Normal-Tissue-Complication-Probability (NTCP) and Tumor-Control-Probability (TCP) were evaluated.

Hyper-cycling has a limited advantage in terms of BED reduction on kidneys for 177Lu, while for 90Y the effect is sizable and helps in reducing the NTCP. For all 177Lu-schemes the renal toxicity risk is negligible while for some 90Y-schemes the NTCP is not null. In case of tumor uptake reduction with cycles the treatment efficacy is reduced with a BED loss up to 46%. The TCP decreases when assuming normally-distributed tumor radiosensitivity values.

This paper discusses how the combination of dosimetry and radiobiological modeling may help in exploring the link between the treatment schedule and the potential clinical outcome. The results highlight the capability of model to reproduce the available clinical data and provide useful qualitative information. Further investigation on dose distribution and dose uptake reduction with accurate clinical data is needed to progress in this field.