Cellular effect of thermal neutron capture treatment using 10B1-para-boronophenylalanine: lethal effect on melanoma cells with different degrees of X-ray sensitivity.

We studied the effect of neutron capture treatment using 10B-compound on X-ray sensitive P-39 and X-ray resistant G-361 human melanoma cell lines, and found a high lethal effect of boron neutron capture therapy in comparison with conventional ionizing radiation. The P-39 line was sensitive to thermal neutron radiation, and extremely sensitive to bleomycin treatment, whereas the G-361 line was resistant to both forms of treatment; however, the two cell lines had similar sensitivity to thermal neutron radiation after pretreatment with 10B1-para-boronophenylalanine (10B1-BPA, 200 micrograms/ml medium). These results show that the thermal neutron capture products (a 7Li nucleus and alpha particle) are highly damaging and short range in tumor cells and thus more efficiently inactivate melanoma cells irrespective of x-ray sensitivity, than conventional X-ray-irradiation.