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Enhanced biological effectiveness with carbon nanoparticles in proton therapy: a simulation study

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Abstract

The methods of proton targeted therapy have been proposed in many researches as the technique to enhance the biological effectiveness of proton therapy. In this regard, different materials, such as high-Z targets or boron and, recently, carbon nanoparticles, have been tested theoretically and experimentally. The present work as the continuation of our previous study has been performed to assess the method of using the carbon nanoparticles in proton therapy. The carbon nanoparticles inclusion not only increased the dose related to the high Linear Energy Transfer (LET) secondary alpha particles (100% increase) but also, led to two phenomena with greater impacts; the recoil carbon ions into the cancerous tissue and the slowed-down primary protons when passing through the target. The calculations showed 300% increase in dose related to the recoil carbon ions. Also, an enhancement in total proton effectiveness was observed from the small fraction of the primary protons which have been slowed down by the target atoms and fallen into the higher-LET region. Hence, the dose related to the low energy protons enhanced up to several orders of magnitude and a considerable increased in total proton dose as well. The present study has been performed in a micro-scale and using GEANT4 for dose evaluation and GEANT4-DNA as the extension of GEANT4 code for studying the induced DNA damages from mentioned charged particles. The novelty of this work is the demonstration of the potential for enhancing the Relative Biological Effectiveness in conventional proton therapy significantly.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has associated data in a data repository. [Authors’ comment: The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author.]

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Plasma and Nuclear Fusion Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University for supporting this work.

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plasma and Nuclear Fusion Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, Tehran, 14155-1339, Iran

    Farshid Tabbakh

  2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, IL, 60115-2862, USA

    Narayan S. Hosmane

Authors
  1. Farshid Tabbakh
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  2. Narayan S. Hosmane
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Contributions

Dr. FT conducted the experiment(s), Dr. FT and Prof. Dr. NSH formed the discussions. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Farshid Tabbakh.

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In the present study, no human (or animal) tissue was involved.

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Tabbakh, F., Hosmane, N.S. Enhanced biological effectiveness with carbon nanoparticles in proton therapy: a simulation study. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 138, 538 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04150-7

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