Biomedicine: Resisting radiation

High doses of ionizing radiation, such as those used in radiotherapy for cancer, can cause many of the body's normal cells to self-destruct. But a tool pinched from cancer's own arsenal might keep those cells alive.

Elena Feinstein of Cleveland BioLabs in Buffalo, New York, and Andrei Gudkov of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, also in Buffalo, developed a drug from a bacterial protein, flagellin, that activates a cell-survival pathway, known as the NF-B pathway, that is constantly active in the majority of tumours.

Mice given 0.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of this protein — flagellin — survived usually lethal doses of radiation, up to 13 joules per kilogram of tissue.

Science 320, 226–230 (2008)