The purpose of the proposed grant application is to further develop a therapeutic regimen focused on radiological/nuclear medical countermeasures. Very few medical products have been shown to counter the acute and long-term injuries that can result from a nuclear or radiological accident or attack. Medical products and regimens that mitigate and/or treat radiation injury post-exposure (i.e., administration of first dose to start at least 24 hours after radiation exposure), with emphasis on broad activity (i.e. multi-syndrome and/or multi-tissue), ease of administration in a mass casualty and emergency scenario; safety; and long shelf-life are still to be developed and are thus of high priority. Therapeutic administration of recombinant proteins to lethally irradiated wild-type mice resulted in mitigation of lethal total body irradiation. These findings suggest that pharmacologic augmentation of the activity such proteins might offer a rational approach to the mitigation of tissue injury and lethality caused by ionizing radiation.
Very few medical products have been shown to counter the acute and long-term injuries that can result from a nuclear or radiological accident or attack. Recent non-terrorist related accidents have also increased global and national attention to the need for medical countermeasures, decorporation agents and biodosimetry devices. This proposal seeks to test whether proteins that showed radio-mitigation in animal experiments might be further modified for ease of use, efficacy and efficiency.
