Radiobiology and medical applications
Radiobiology is the point where medical science and the ionizing radiation coexist. Generally, ionizing radiation is harmful and potentially lethal but since many years, the impact of the radiation on living things has been profited to treat cancer among other diseases or to obtain medical images.
The most common types of radiation used for radiobiology are electrons, X-Rays or Gamma Rays and, for medical imaging purposes, β+-nuclei emitters. Recently, protons have been in the spotlight since their use for treating cancer points to better survival of healthy tissue thanks to the way charged particles deposit their energy. This type of interaction follows the Bragg curve which has the maximum energy deposition at the end of the trajectory of the particle.
At CMAM, the energy achieved by the 5 MV Tandem accelerator allows to perform experiments at the Bragg peak’s energy threshold, being a useful tool for investigating the effect of the radiation in cell cultures.
At CMAM we are contributing, both as a facility for external users and as own research, in the use of nanoparticles in biological cultures for dose enhancement, investigating contrast agents useful for dosimetry and proton range verification and testing the direct effect of the protons and the dependency on the way how the dose is delivered in different cell lines.