Drug 'could block radiation damage'
Drug 'could block radiation damage'
2008-04-11Newsfeed
A drug could help protect against the fall-out from a "dirty bomb" terrorist attack or nuclear disaster.
A drug could help protect against the fall-out from a "dirty bomb" terrorist attack or nuclear disaster.
CBLB592 blocks radiation damage to the body, but could also be used to make radiotherapy cancer treatments safer and more effective.
The drug works by turning on a biological mechanism that helps healthy cells survive radiation.
But it does not appear to have the same effect on normal tumours, which remain vulnerable.
Cells are killed indirectly by radiation, which turns on a cell suicide process called apoptosis. Its purpose is to wipe out cells with damaged DNA before they turn cancerous.
However in some cases resistant cancer cells are able to block apoptosis and withstand radiotherapy.
But US scientists led by Dr Lyudmila Burdelya, from the Rosswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, wanted to see if apoptosis could be turned off in a controlled way to protect against radiation.
CBLB502 is a drug that inhibits the protein which kick-starts cell suicide at the genetic level.
Mice and monkeys injected with the drug 45 minutes to 24 hours before being subjected to normally lethal radiation were more likely to survive or live longer than untreated animals.
Copyright © The Press Association 2008
