Fig. 6: BNCT with immunological adjuvant–loaded boron capsule induces systemic antitumour immunity leading to the inhibition of distal and metastatic tumours.

A Treatment scheme. B Schematic illustration of the analysis of distant tumour immune microenvironment. C Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) of TNF-α, IL-12p70 and IL-6 in the serum of mice at 7 days after the indicated treatments (n = 6 samples). D–G Quantification of infiltrating CD3 + (D), CD4 + (E), CD8 + (F), Foxp3 + (G) immune cell from the distant B16F10 tumours (n = 4 mice). H–K Assays of distant tumour growth in mice treated with neutron capsule+neutron irradiation. The mice were treated by boron capsule, PEG-B-COF, imiquimod or PBS with (+) or without neutron irradiation (n = 6 mice). Data shown as mean ± SD. (two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test, ***P < 0.001). H, J Average distant tumour volumes in the mice inoculated with B16F10 xenografts (H) and MC38 xenografts (J). I, K Survival curves. L Representative lung H&E staining for each treatment group. M The number of metastatic nodules in different groups (n = 6 mice). (C, D, E, F, G, M), data are shown as mean ± SD, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Tukey’s HSD post hoc test. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and ****P < 0.0001. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.