This technique has recently been applied in clinical trials in several countries around the world, especially in Japan, Finland, Argentina and Italy, for cases of very poor prognosis as brain tumours (glioblastoma multiforme) or recurrent head and neck cancers. It has also shown good results in palliative care.

In BNCT treatment planning, the effective (biological) weighted dose must be evaluated, at least approximately, in order to compare the values to the dose delivered in conventional radiotherapy treatments. This is a key problem because the weighted dose in the healthy tissue is the usual constraint in treatment planning. Several assumptions and approximations are used in the currently used weighting factors.

We have proposed a new formalism for a better estimate of the effective dose as well as an improved comparison to conventional radiotherapy, in order to anticipate the effects of BNCT in the tissue in a more accurate way. The new hypothesis needs to be confirmed by radiobiology experiments with cells.

Moreover, since the neutron radiobiology data of interest for BNCT are generally scarce, more data are required by the neutron irradiation of cells culture in different conditions. The results of this research will be directly applicable to future treatments with BNCT (bench-to-bedside).

Contact : tellier@ill.fr