Evaluation of radiation damage effects of low-energy Auger and conversion electrons emitted by 134Ce decay using a Monte Carlo method
摘要
Targeted radionuclide therapy (TRT) is a cancer treatment method that delivers radiation to specific tumor cells, enabling efficient tumor cell killing. Radionuclides emitting short-range beta or alpha particles have previously been the primary focus. TRT approaches utilizing low-energy electrons, such as Auger and internal conversion electrons, have attracted interest because of their highly localized tumor-killing potential. 134Ce is an imaging surrogate in the form of a 134Ce/134La pair for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in 225Ac targeted alpha therapy, and it has recently exhibited promising therapeutic properties. This study employs TOPAS-nBio, a Monte Carlo simulation tool, to investigate the radiation damage effects of 134Ce from dosimetric and DNA-scale perspectives. The DNA damage yield analysis incorporates both physical and chemical processes. In the water sphere geometry, the overall dose contribution of 134Ce shows patterns generally similar to those of other Auger-emitting radionuclides, and 134Ce shows damage yields per decay close to those of 161Tb on the DNA scale. Although 134Ce induces fewer DNA double-strand breaks per decay in the nucleus than 125I and 161Tb, it exhibits a higher double-strand break yield when normalized to absorbed dose. Such damage outcome predictions suggest that further research on radionuclide therapy using 134Ce is worthwhile.