Biophysical modeling and experimental validation of relative biological effectiveness (RBE) for 4He ion beam therapy

BackgroundHelium (He-4) ionbeam therapy provides favorable biophysical characteristics compared to currently administered particle therapies, i.e., reduced lateral scattering and enhanced biological damage to deep-seated tumors like heavier ions, while simultaneously lessened particle fragmentation in distal healthy tissues as observed with lighter protons. Despite these biophysical advantages, raster-scanning He-4 ion therapy remains poorly explored e.g., clinical translational is hampered by the lack of reliable and robust estimation of physical and radiobiological uncertainties. Therefore, prior to the upcoming He-4 ion therapy program at the Heidelberg Ion-beam Therapy Center (HIT), we aimed to characterize the biophysical phenomena of He-4 ion beams and various aspects of the associated models for clinical integration.MethodsCharacterization of biological effect for He-4 ionbeams was performed in both homogenous and patient-like treatment scenarios using innovative models for estimation of relative biological effectiveness (RBE) in silico and their experimental validation using clonogenic cell survival as the gold-standard surrogate. Towards translation of RBE models in patients, the first GPU-based treatment planning system (non-commercial) for raster-scanning He-4 ionbeams was devised in-house (FRoG).ResultsOur data indicate clinically relevant uncertainty of 5-10% across different model simulations, highlighting their distinct biological and computational methodologies. The in vitro surrogate for highly radio-resistant tissues presented large RBE variability and uncertainty within the clinical dose range.Conclusions Existing phenomenological and mechanistic/biophysical models were successfully integrated and validated in both Monte Carlo and GPU-accelerated analytical platforms against in vitro experiments, and tested using pristine peaks and clinical fields in highly radio-resistant tissues where models exhibit the greatest RBE uncertainty. Together, these efforts mark an important step towards clinical translation of raster-scanning He-4 ionbeam therapy to the clinic.