Cancer is one of the most relevant diseases worldwide because of its incidence, prevalence, and mortality. Current cancer treatments do not only kill cancer cells but also healthy tissue, causing severe secondary effects. In order to overcome this situation, more effective and selective treatments are necessary. Neutron capture therapy (NCT) is a biologically targeted form of radiotherapy which exploits the potential of some specific isotopes to capture thermal neutrons producing charged particles suitable for the cancer treatment. The range of the particles produced in NCT can be limited to the size of one cell. Therefore, provided that neutron capture species are selectively delivered to tumour cells, no damage will occur to the surrounding healthy tissue. Novel delivery agents suitable for NCT must be investigated that will allow a localized cancer treatment. NANOTER presents an innovative and previously unexplored approach to develop ultra-sensitive nanotherapeutic agents for NCT. High concentration of Neutron capture species (enriched boron counponds) were sealed in the interior of carbon nanocapsules and their behavior against neutron irradiation experiments was investigated and compared against other current materials for NCT. The external surface of the filled carbon nanocapsules were functionalized in order to increase the water dispersibility and cellular biocompatibility. The interdisciplinary approach taken to develop the proposed research programme is expected to contribute to the development of alternative and previously unexplored nanoplatforms for NCT, enhancing the performance of current delivery agents for NCT. The final aim of this project was to create novel NCT agents with improved cancer therapeutic efficacy, that can be successfully translated into preclinical studies.
