New Trends in Enhancing Biological Efficacy and Safety of Proton Therapy: State of Art and Prospective

Abstract:

Due to the super-linear growth of the number of particle (especially, proton) therapy centers in 2010–2018, many researchers forecasted the number of patients treated by proton therapy to reach 500–550 thousand before 2026. However, the real farther overall spread of hadron therapy was much slower due to its high cost, very high research intensity, and very high requirements for medical and engineering staff, so that by the end of 2026 the number of patients will reach only 410–415 thousand, clearly tending to saturation with an ever decreasing share of ion therapy and showing that the increase of the biological efficacy and safety of proton and especially heavy ion therapy is it is an urgent need of today’s time. The most promising and experimentally substantiated concept of the whole body and the highly localized combination cancer therapy was developed and tested by Japanese and Georgian researchers in 2015–2020, which clearly demonstrated the high efficiency of the highly localized multicomponent combined therapy of cancer. This paper reports in vitro and in vivo data on the relative anticancer efficacy and acute toxicity of the 50 various multicomponent nanoparticle containing anticancer combinations in comparison to the widely used anticancer drugs gemcitabine, carboplatin, cisplatin and paclitaxel systematically applied against the Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), clearly showing that the newly developed combinations can be several times more efficient and have a several times less toxicity than the usually applied anticancer drugs. The obtained data also provide sufficient reasons to conclude that the significant increase in the effectiveness of combined formulations is caused by the super-additive synergistic interaction of nanoparticles and of the active components of anticancer mixtures. It is especially important that the newly developed “cocktails” reveal a 3 to 10 times increased therapeutic window due to several times increased necrotic and apoptotic activity against the cancer cells in comparison to healthy tissue cells, drastically increasing the therapeutic value of the drugs due to higher efficacy, higher safety and significantly reduced duration and costs of treatment.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 1029)
• Pages: 107-121
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/p-5fjZXp
• Online since: November 2025
• Authors: Archil Chirakadze*, Nana Khuskivadze, Irakli Nadiradze, Zakaria Buachidze
• Keywords: Acute Toxicity, Alkali Metal Solutions, Cancer, Cell Viability, Combined Therapy of Cancer, Drug Selectivity, Efficacy, Heavy Ion Therapy, Highly Localized Combination Therapy, High-pH Therapy Concept, Limitations, MTT Testing, Nanoparticle, Proton Therapy, Synergy

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