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Protecting healthy cells from dangerous radiation exposure

3 November 2009
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, may be hot on the heels of a Holy Grail of cancer therapy: They have found a way to not only protect healthy tissue from the toxic effects of radiation treatment, but also increase tumour death. The findings appear in Science Translational Medicine.

More than half of all cancer patients are treated at least in part with radiation, said study co-author Jeff S. Isenberg, MD, MPH, associate professor, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine, Pitt School of Medicine. But the same radiation that kills cancer cells can also destroy healthy ones, causing side effects such as nausea and vomiting, skin sores and rashes, and weakness and fatigue. Long-term radiation exposure can lead to the scarring and death of normal tissue.

He and his NCI colleagues have identified a biochemical signalling pathway that can profoundly influence what happens to both cancerous and healthy cells when they are exposed to radiation. In mouse experiments, they found that blocking a molecule called thrombospondin-1 from binding to its cell surface receptor, called CD47, affords normal tissues nearly complete protection from both standard and very high doses of radiation.

"We almost couldn't believe what we were seeing," Dr Isenberg said. "This dramatic protective effect occurred in skin, muscle and bone marrow cells, which is very encouraging. Cells that might have died of radiation exposure remained viable and functional when pre-treated with agents that interfere with the thrombospondin-1/CD47 pathway."

 

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