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Anti Radiation Drug
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Anti Radiation Drug
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thedoc
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Anti Radiation Drug
«
on:
04/02/2015 14:37:43 »
A drug that protects against radiation exposure, and might cut side-effects for radiotherapy patients, has worked successfully in mice...
Read a transcript of the interview by clicking here
or [chapter podcast=1000958 track=15.01.27/Naked_Scientists_Show_15.01.27_1003211.mp3]
Listen to it now[/chapter] or
[download as MP3]
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Last Edit: 04/02/2015 14:37:43 by _system
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Re: Anti Radiation Drug
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Reply #1 on:
04/02/2015 17:10:23 »
Interesting but I feel somewhat improbable. As I understand it, radiation damage is principally caused by free water radicals (produced by the radiation ionising cytoplasm) interfering with the hydrogen bonding of mitotic DNA. Once you have induced e.g. crosslinking errors, it is difficult to see how any chemical agent can unscramble them without causing further damage and errors.
I guess you could find a chemical agent that preferentially kills cells that are replicating abnormally quickly, and this would prevent carcinogenesis, but the mention of a threshold dose suggests the new drug works on acute (deterministic) radiation effects rather than stochastic ones, so it must be bringing dead cells back to life.
Hmmm.
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Re: Anti Radiation Drug
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Reply #2 on:
04/02/2015 23:20:10 »
I read one of the interviewee's articles, entitled "Mitigation of radiation injury by selective stimulation of the LPA2 receptor" (Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids, Volume 1831, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 117–125)
From what I understood of the article, the drugs prevent apoptosis of affected cells--the drugs do not induce repair of damaged DNA. I guess that after radiation exposure there are cells that are still potentially functional, but damaged enough, or close enough to damaged cells, that they would naturally undergo apoptosis (cell death). If enough cells in an organism undergo apoptosis, the organism can no longer function, and dies.
My guess is that these drugs prevent acute, short term symptoms of radiation poisoning, but may actually
increase
cancer rates, by not allowing highly damaged cells to die...
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