Cancer remains one of the most significant global health challenges, responsible for millions of deaths each year. Among the various treatment options available, radiation therapy is used in about half of all cancer cases. However, conventional radiation treatments, such as external beam radiotherapy, often damage surrounding healthy tissues, leading to severe side effects and limiting their effectiveness, especially for tumors located near critical structures.
Neutron Capture Therapy (NCT) is a form of radiotherapy that uses specific isotopes to selectively destroy cancer cells. When these isotopes react with neutrons, they trigger a nuclear reaction that produces lethal particles, effectively killing cancer at the cellular level while minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissues. This makes NCT particularly valuable for treating complex, recurrent, and radioresistant tumors. Although its potential was demonstrated over 50 years ago, technological advancements in neutron accelerators are only now making NCT more widely accessible. However, its clinical success is still limited by the availability of effective delivery agents that allow the accumulation of sufficient neutron-active elements at tumor sites.
TARLIT focuses on a previously unexplored approach that consists on the encapsulation of lithium-6 (6Li) compounds inside nanoparticles. In this way, leakage of lithium is prevented while the use of targeted nanoparticles enhances accumulation of the active element (6Li) into cancer cells. Despite 6Li holds great potential for NCT, most lithium salts are highly soluble, making it difficult to control their biodistribution and ensure selective tumor accumulation. Our strategy enables the targeted accumulation of lithium-6 in hard to treat tumors, such as head and neck cancer.
