Combined radiation strategies for novel and enhanced cancer treatment

Abstract

Numerous studies focus on cancer therapy worldwide, and although many advances have been recorded, the complexity of the disease dictates thinking out of the box to confront it. This study reviews some of the currently available ionizing (IR) and non-ionizing radiation (NIR)-based treatment methods and explores their possible combinations that lead to synergistic, multimodal approaches with promising therapeutic outcomes. Traditional techniques, like radiotherapy (RT) show decent results, although they cannot spare 100% the healthy tissues neighboring with the cancer ones. Targeted therapies, such as proton and photodynamic therapy (PT and PDT, respectively) present adequate outcomes, even though each one has its own drawbacks. To overcome these limitations, the combination of therapeutic modalities has been proposed and has already been showing promising results. At the same time, the recent advances in nanotechnology in the form of nanoparticles enhance cancer therapy, making multimodal treatments worthy of exploring and studying. The combination of RT and PDT has reached the level of clinical trials and is showing promising results. Moreover, in vitro and in vivo studies of nanoparticles with PDT have also provided beneficial results concerning enhanced radiation treatments. In any case, novel and multimodal approaches have to be adopted to achieve personalized, enhanced and effective cancer treatment.

Keywords: Multimodal treatment; NPs–PDT combination; RT–PDT combination; photodynamic therapy; proton–PDT combination.