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Drug that protects you from radiation in the making
Scientists mimicked one of cancer's sneaky tricks to create a drug that promises to prevent a serious side effect of cancer treatment - radiation damage - or offer an antidote during a nuclear emergency.
- AP
- Published: 00:39 April 12, 2008
Washington: Scientists mimicked one of cancer's sneaky tricks to create a drug that promises to prevent a serious side effect of cancer treatment - radiation damage - or offer an antidote during a nuclear emergency.
A single dose of the experimental drug protected both mice and monkeys from what should have been lethal doses of radiation, researchers report in yesterday's edition of the journal Science. A study to see if the compound is safe in people could begin as early as this summer.
It's still early-stage research.
Radiation is a powerful tool to destroy cancer cells. But certain healthy tissues are especially sensitive to it. And when it comes to radiation emergencies, such as the Chernobyl accident, full-body exposure to high doses can cause an extremely lethal "GI syndrome" that has no treatment.
Radiation doesn't kill healthy cells in the same way that it kills cancer cells. Instead, bone marrow and GI cells overreact to what should be reparable damage and commit suicide, through a well-known process called apoptosis, explained Andrei Gudkov of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, who led development of the drug code-named CBLB502.
In a series of experiments, Gudkov's team injected the drug into mice and rhesus monkeys anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour before exposing the animals to lethal doses of full-body radiation.
The drug dramatically improved the animals' survival, protecting against both bone marrow and GI destruction, with no obvious side effects. The drug improved survival when given to mice an hour after fairly high radiation doses, although not the very highest.
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