Boron nitride nanotubes radiolabeled with 153Sm and 159Gd: Potential application in nanomedicine

Radiolabelling of nanomaterials for medical imaging and therapy

“…128 In addition to proton activation radiolabelling reactions, neutron activation has been also carried out for the radiolabelling of holmiumbased garnet magnetic NPs (HoIG) via the 165 Ho(n,g) 166 Ho nuclear reaction and more recently, boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) with 153 Sm and 159 Gd through 152 Sm(n,g) 153 Sm and 158 Gd(n,g) 159 Gd nuclear reactions respectively. 129,130 A high control over the radiolabelling location represents the main advantage of this method, as only specific atoms can Ac, 64 Cu, 59 Fe, 68 Ga, 111 In 109-111 and 115-119 Gold NPs 195 Au, 198 Au, 199 Au 105-108 Up-converting NPs 153 Sm, 90 undergo the nuclear reaction, with a consequently high RCS. However, this method has a key drawback in the requirement of a proton/neutron beam source, which involves the use of complex instruments that are not widely available.…”

Boron and Gadolinium Loaded Fe3O4 Nanocarriers for Potential Application in Neutron Capture Therapy

“…Gd ions can be immobilized via chelate complexes, such as Gd-pentaacetate (Gd-DTPA) [30]. Authors [11,31,32] have shown benefit in using both of boron and gadolinium compounds due to the added diagnostic properties and synergetic effect in the neutron capture reaction. For example, it is declared that adding Gd-DTPA has decreased the survival of cancer cells by 80-90%.…”

Potential Production of Theranostic Boron Nitride Nanotubes (64Cu-BNNTs) Radiolabeled by Neutron Capture

“…An intense peak close to 2θ = 26.65 • (Figure 3a) corresponds to the plane (002) and is attributed to the main peak of the h-BN structure. Peaks assigned to h-BN are also observed at 2θ = 41.78 • , 42.81 • , 50.16 • , 55.09 • , 59.40 • and 76.05 • , which correspond to the (100), ( 101), ( 102), (004), ( 103) and (110) planes, respectively [14,23,26]. After the introduction of Cu nanoparticles to the BNNTs, new diffraction peaks were observed (Figure 3b),so the region between 30 • and 80 • was highlighted.…”

“…After the synthesis of Cu nanoparticles, two new contributions were observed at 200.4 and 197.0 eV (Figure 5b); the first is attributed to Cl II and the second to the presence of metallic copper (Cu 0). In addition, the binding energies at 396.6 eV and 400.0 eV are attributed to B-N-B bonding [33] and O-B-N bonding [14], respectively. The O 1s spectra are also shown in Figure 5e,f.…”

“…Another potential application of BNNTs is in diagnostic medicine. In this sense, BNNTs doped with rare earth beta-emitters with short half-lives, such as 153 Sm and 159 Gd, can also be used as radioisotopes for imaging [14].…”