Biophysical modeling of low-energy ion irradiations with NanOx

Targeted radiotherapies with low-energy ions show interesting possibilities for the selective irradiation of tumor cells, a strategy particularly appropriate for the treatment of disseminated cancer. Two promising examples are boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) and targeted radionuclide therapy with $$ -particle emitters (TAT). The successful clinical translation of these radiotherapies requires the implementation of accurate radiation dosimetry approaches able to take into account the impact on treatments of the biological effectiveness of ions and the heterogeneity in the therapeutic agent distribution inside the tumor cells. To this end, biophysical models can be applied to translate the interactions of radiations with matter into biological endpoints, such as cell survival.

The NanOx model was initially developed for predicting the cell survival fractions resulting from irradiations with the high-energy ion beams encountered in hadrontherapy. We present in this work a new implementation of the model that extends its application to irradiations with low-energy ions, as the ones found in TAT and BNCT.

The NanOx model was adapted to consider the energy loss of primary ions within the sensitive volume (i.e., the cell nucleus). Additional assumptions were introduced to simplify the practical implementation of the model and reduce computation time. In particular, for low-energy ions the narrow-track approximation allowed to neglect the energy deposited by secondary electrons outside the sensitive volume, increasing significantly the performance of simulations. Calculations were performed to compare the original hadrontherapy implementation of the NanOx model with the present one in terms of the inactivation cross sections of human salivary gland cells as a function of the kinetic energy of incident $$ -particles.

The predictions of the previous and current versions of NanOx agreed for incident energies higher than 1 MeV/n. For lower energies, the new NanOx implementation predicted a decrease in the inactivation cross sections that depended on the length of the sensitive volume.

We reported in this work an extension of the NanOx biophysical model to consider irradiations with low-energy ions, such as the ones found in TAT and BNCT. The excellent agreement observed at intermediate and high energies between the original hadrontherapy implementation and the present one showed that NanOx offers a consistent, self-integrated framework for describing the biological effects induced by ion irradiations. Future work will focus on the application of the latest version of NanOx to cases closer to the clinical setting.