Radiobiology Topics At ESTRO 27 (European Society For Therapeutic Radiology And Oncology)

Main Category: Radiology / Nuclear Medicine
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology;  Conferences
Article Date: 22 Sep 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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More biology abstracts were submitted to this year's ESTRO meeting than ever before. This is very encouraging for European radiobiology, particularly for "translational" biological research on radiation effects aimed at improving radiotherapy. Judging from the number of abstracts, one area of particular interest is signal transduction (transmitting signals down a chain of interacting proteins), and its links with DNA repair. This is an important area, since growth factors, growth factor receptors, specific oncogenes and suppressor genes can all impact on, or are directly involved in, these pathways. These pathways are often deregulated in cancer, which usually leads to changes in radiation sensitivity of tumour cells to (usually increased resistance).

Several abstracts address the issue of targeting deregulated pathways (signal transduction and DNA repair) with small molecule drugs. The goal here is the holy grail of making tumour cells more sensitive to radiation, and so killing them while not affecting surrounding healthy tissues. There is light at the end of this tunnel, making this a very exciting and promising research area.

The effects of microenvironment on responses to radiation also get their fair share of attention. Hypoxia is the archetypal micro-environmental factor because of its large effect on radiosensitivity. The complexities of hypoxia biology are now being uncovered, with important consequences for diagnosis and treatment. Of particular interest are the continuous changes in gene expression patterns with time and level of hypoxia, which affect both cell viability and sensitivity to DNA-damaging agents such as radiation and some drugs.

Microenvironment also encompasses variations in the ability of cells to communicate with each other, either via external signals or via cell-cell contact. This is crucial in the response of normal tissues to damage. There is considerable attention in this meeting to normal tissue response, one of the most interesting being the use of stem cells to rescue damaged organs from the destructive effects of radiation. Another important topic is predicting radiation damage to normal tissues from the genetic make-up of the patient, in particular which DNA sequences they contain in specific damage response genes - another promising research area in which progress is being made

Adrian C. Begg
Scientific Advisory Committee Radiobiology

About ESTRO 27

ESTRO 27 (September 14th to 18th, 2008) offered an outstanding scientific programme combining lectures from eminent invited speakers, proffered papers and poster discussions, teaching lectures on a wide range of topics including clinical issues, brachytherapy, radiobiology, physics and technology as well as debates on controversial topics and clinical case discussions, a special poster reception, poster discussion sessions and electronic poster viewing.

ESTRO 27 hosted the largest European exhibition in Radiotherapy with participation from all the leading manufacturers.

ESTRO 27

ESTRO (European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology)

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