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The
Center for Biophysical Assessment and Risk Management Following Irradiation
exists to bring together the knowledge, technologies, and effort of a
multidisciplinary, international team of scientific personnel in order
to develop medical countermeasures to radiological terrorism. The Center
housed at the University of Rochester is one of 8 NIH/NIAID funded centers
throughout the United States. |
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| Our CMCR is focused on the development of medical countermeasures to assess, diagnose, and treat those exposed to radiation by developing (1) methods for rapid, high throughput assessment or measurement of radiation exposure through both bioassays and instruments, and (2) agents for mitigation and treatment of radiation effects with an emphasis on early and late side effects in non-hematopoietic tissues. Given both the urgent need to develop and validate medical countermeasures to seemingly imminent radiological and nuclear threats, and the dearth of available assessment tools or therapies, our short-term Center goal has been to develop and validate a number of therapeutic agents and radiation exposure assessment devices as quickly as possible, at least to the point of usefulness and availability for an emergency situation. Such a requirement is driven by the need for emergency/disaster response teams to be able to rapidly identify those who are contaminated with radioactive material and reassure those who are not, assess the extent/dose of radiation exposure, and administer appropriate treatment. Our expectation is to accelerate the development of our dosimeters and discriminators (methods of screening for radiation exposure which do not measure dose) as well as 2 or 3 of our most promising therapeutic agents that can be offered to victims (and rescue workers) to mitigate early and/or late non-hematopoietic effects. |
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PROJECT 1 Project 1 has demonstrated early progress with a number of agents that may prove useful in radiation mitigation and/or treatment. These include EsA as a lung and skin radiation protector, which is undergoing acquisition of intellectual property (international patent). In addition, testing of customized Curcumin analogs and customized FGF analogs has suggested that these agents may provide both protection and mitigation of the acute gastrointestinal syndrome in addition to both early and late cutaneous radiation toxicity. PROJECT 2 Cytokine profiles using bead arrays have generated a panel of cytokines and growth factors in the C57BL/6 mouse and these may provide information for biodosimetric analysis. Most exciting has been the demonstration that juvenile mice have greatly different responses than their more mature counterparts. This added complexity will be important as we attempt to develop agents that mitigate radiation toxicity for the general population. We believe this to be the first discovered difference in radiobiological marker response in a juvenile population. PROJECT 3 The instrument at Dartmouth is being cloned so that comprehensive measurements can be made in a clinical situation. This instrument should be ready for routine operation on schedule at the close of year 2. In addition, finger-nail dosimetry using EPR appears promising, and unlike most biological measures is relatively stable in time and available without a lag time. The collection of samples should also be very simple and safe. Thus this approach will be studied further at Dartmouth and concurrently with additional technologies via a pilot project grant at Rochester. PROJECT 4 The 3-D human bone marrow culture is essential to the support of MN-RET as radiation dose estimate in humans. It holds great promise as an ex vivo culture systems to investigate the potential effects by either mitigating agents or growth factors on human bone marrows. PROJECT 5 An exciting development has been the detection and characterization of gamma-H2AX foci after irradiation at low doses. These studies can now be done by a number of methods including in vitro and in vivo models. |
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| Swartz
HM, Iwasaki A, Walczak T, Demidenko E, Salikhov I, Khan N, Lesniewski
P, Thomas J, Romanyukha A, Schauer D, Starewicz P. In vivo EPR dosimetry
to quantify exposures to clinically significant doses of ionising radiation.
Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2006;120(1-4):163-70. PubMed
link |
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| Recent CBARMFI Communications
After-the-Fact Measurement of Clinically Significant Acute Radiation
Exposures. H.M. Swartz, Y. Sakata, B. Williams, A.
Sucheta, P. Lesniewski, R. Dong, M. Kmiec, E. Demidenko, A. Romanyukha,
P. Starewicz. ASTRO/Radiation Research Society Meeting, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. November 4-7, 2006 (oral presentation). |
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| about these images | website
amy k. huser |
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