Further in vitro radiobiological analysis on 10B-BPA BNCT of malignant melanoma: Correlation of determined 10B-content and cell killing effect

The successful application of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) for melanoma depends on the following points, (1) high accumulation of 10B in target melanoma cells and (2) high tumor/normal tissue 10B ratio, theoretically greater than 5. The authors are continuing further basic studies to enhance 10B uptake by melanoma cells for the following reasons, (1) neutron radiation fluence could be reduced for safer application and (2) deep-seated melanomas need to be treatable by BNCT. Therefore, it is required to find out conditions which will enhance 10B uptake by melanoma cells, and also to develop a method of measuring low 10B levels using small samples, such as cultured melanoma cells. Such a method would serve to correlate 10B content in melanoma cells to its corresponding killing effect in BNCT and to measure increased selective accumulation of 10B1-BPA in melanoma cells as compared to normal cells