Megavoltage X-ray Dose Enhancement with Gold Nanoparticles in Tumor Bearing Mice

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Sayyed Hossein Mousavie Anijdan 1
Seyyed Rabi Mahdavi 2
Alireza Shirazi 2
Mohammad Ali Zarrinfard 3
Jamshid Hajati 4
1 Department of Medical Physics, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran
2 Department of Medical Physics and Engineering, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Medical Nanotechnology, Faculty of Advanced Medical Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4 Department of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
One of the applications of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) in medicine is radiation dose-enhancing effect. Although
there are many simulations, in vitro and in vivo evidence that GNPs can enhance significantly the radiation dose
effect of orthovoltage beams. These beams compared with megavoltage (MV) beams, have limited applications
in radiotherapy. In order to evaluate GNPs radiosensitization performance with MV beams in-vivo, we used two
most clinically used X-ray beams (6 and 18 MV) with the dose of 20 Gy for each mouse. Intratumoral injection
of 50 nm GNPs with the concentration of 5 mg ml-1 was applied to melanoma tumor growing in the left leg of 7
to 8 mice in 4 control and treatment groups of C57BL/6 mice. Albeit, using 10 cm plexiglass jig phantom in the
beam path improved the radiation - treatments, the statistical differences between groups were not significant.
According to the results, it is concluded that mice can be treated with smaller tumors and higher concentrations
of GNPs in MV radiation beams.
Keywords
Gold nanoparticles (GNPs)
radiation dose enhancement
tumor
megavoltage X-ray