New perspective for GdNCT. Gd-DTPA reaches the nucleus of glioblastoma cells in culture and in vivo

We investigated the prospects of gadolinium as a neutron capture therapy agent by combining three independent techniques to study the uptake of Gd-DTPA in vitro, in cultured glioblastoma cells, and in vivo, in the glioblastoma tissue sections after injection of Gd-DTPA and tumor extraction. We show that gadolinium not only penetrates the plasma membrane of glioblastoma cells grown in culture, but we also observe a statistically significant higher concentration of Gd in the nucleus relative to the cytoplasm. For the in vivo experiments, Gd-DTPA was administered to 6 glioblastoma patients before neurosurgery. The extracted bioptic tissue was then analyzed with spectromictroscopy, showing Gd localized in the nuclei of glioblastoma cells in 5 patients out of the 6 analyzed. (author)