Janus Experiments

Last updated

The Janus Experiments investigated the effects of exposure to neutron radiation and gamma radiation on mice and dogs. They consisted of ten large scale experiments conducted at Argonne National Laboratory from 1972 to 1989. To explore various relationships, the studies varied radiation type, dose rates, total dose and fractionation. The work formed the basis of dozens of publications in the medical literature. [1]

The original studies were funded by the United States Department of Energy. Later grants from NASA and additional funding from the Department of Energy enabled researchers at Northwestern University to make the data public through mouse [2] and dog [3] portals that permit radiation researchers to search for and request specific tissues from the studies' archives. These resources continue to be used in studies of radio-sensitivity, for example, at the laboratory of Gayle Woloschak at Northwestern University. [4]

Studies of the survival and causes of death of the control groups of mice and dogs, which were not exposed to radiation, were the basis of the development by S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce A. Carnes of their biodemographic theory of intrinsic mortality.

Related Research Articles

Radiation therapy therapy using ionizing radiation

Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is therapy using ionizing radiation, generally as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radiation therapy may be curative in a number of types of cancer if they are localized to one area of the body. It may also be used as part of adjuvant therapy, to prevent tumor recurrence after surgery to remove a primary malignant tumor. Radiation therapy is synergistic with chemotherapy, and has been used before, during, and after chemotherapy in susceptible cancers. The subspecialty of oncology concerned with radiotherapy is called radiation oncology.

Argonne National Laboratory Science and engineering research national laboratory in Lemont, IL, United States

Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by the University of Chicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy located in Lemont, Illinois, outside Chicago. It is the largest national laboratory by size and scope in the Midwest.

ENU chemical compound

ENU, also known as N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (chemical formula C3H7N3O2), is a highly potent mutagen. For a given gene in mice, ENU can induce 1 new mutation in every 700 loci. It is also toxic at high doses.

A clonogenic assay is a cell biology technique for studying the effectiveness of specific agents on the survival and proliferation of cells. It is frequently used in cancer research laboratories to determine the effect of drugs or radiation on proliferating tumor cells as well as for titration of Cell-killing Particles (CKPs) in virus stocks. It was first developed by T.T. Puck and Philip I. Marcus at the University of Colorado in 1955.

United States Department of Energy national laboratories

The United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers are a system of facilities and laboratories overseen by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for the purpose of advancing science and technology to fulfill the DOE mission. Sixteen of the seventeen DOE national laboratories are federally funded research and development centers administered, managed, operated and staffed by private-sector organizations under management and operating (M&O) contract with DOE.

Proton therapy A medical procedure most often used in the treatment of cancer.

In the field of medical procedures, proton therapy, or proton radiotherapy, is a type of particle therapy that uses a beam of protons to irradiate diseased tissue, most often in the treatment of cancer. The chief advantage of proton therapy over other types of external beam radiotherapy is that as a charged particle the dose is deposited over a narrow range of depth, and there is minimal entry, exit, or scattered radiation dose.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a consortium of American universities headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with an office in Washington, D.C., and staff at several other locations across the country.

Joseph Gilbert Hamilton American professor and physicist

Joseph Gilbert Hamilton was an American professor of Medical Physics, Experimental Medicine, General Medicine, and Experimental Radiology as well as director (1948-1957) of the Crocker Laboratory, part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Hamilton studied the medical effects of exposure to radioactive isotopes, which included the use of unsuspecting human subjects.

Louis Harold Gray British physicist

Louis Harold Gray was an English physicist who worked mainly on the effects of radiation on biological systems, is one of the earliest contributors of the field of radiobiology. A summary of his work is given below. Amongst many other achievements, he defined a unit of radiation dosage which was later named after him as an SI unit, the gray.

Radiobiology is a field of clinical and basic medical sciences that involves the study of the action of ionizing radiation on living things, especially health effects of radiation. Ionizing radiation is generally harmful and potentially lethal to living things but can have health benefits in radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer and thyrotoxicosis. Its most common impact is the induction of cancer with a latent period of years or decades after exposure. High doses can cause visually dramatic radiation burns, and/or rapid fatality through acute radiation syndrome. Controlled doses are used for medical imaging and radiotherapy.

The health threats from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions or any missions that venture through the Van-Allen Belts or outside the Earth's magnetosphere. They are one of the greatest barriers standing in the way of plans for interplanetary travel by crewed spacecraft, but space radiation health risks also occur for missions in low Earth orbit such as the International Space Station (ISS).

John Freeman Loutit CBE FRS FRCP Also known as 'Ian'. was an Australian haematologist and radiobiologist.

Entolimod (CBLB502) is being developed by Cleveland Biolabs, Inc. for dual indications under the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) Animal Efficacy Rule as a pivotal-stage radiation countermeasure, and under the FDA’s traditional drug approval pathway as a cancer treatment.

Albert Stevens subject of radiation experiment

Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1, was a victim of a human radiation experiment, and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human. On May 14, 1945, he was injected with 131 kBq of plutonium without his knowledge or informed consent.

Neutron capture therapy of cancer Neutron capture therapy of cancer

Neutron capture therapy (NCT) is a noninvasive therapeutic modality for treating locally invasive malignant tumors such as primary brain tumors, recurrent head and neck cancer, and cutaneous and extracutaneous melanomas. It is a two-step procedure: first, the patient is injected with a tumor-localizing drug containing the non-radioactive isotope boron-10 (10B), which has a high propensity to capture thermal neutrons. The cross section of the 10B is many times greater than that of the other elements present in tissues such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. In the second step, the patient is radiated with epithermal neutrons, the source of which is either a nuclear reactor or, more recently, an accelerator. After losing energy as they penetrate tissue, the neutrons are captured by the 10B, which subsequently emits high-energy alpha particles that can selectively kill those tumor cells that have taken up sufficient quantities of 10B. All of the clinical experience to date with NCT is with the non-radioactive isotope boron-10, and this is known as boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). At this time, the use of other non-radioactive isotopes, such as gadolinium, has been limited to experimental studies, and to date, it has not been used clinically. BNCT has been evaluated clinically as an alternative to conventional radiation therapy for the treatment of high-grade gliomas, meningiomas, and recurrent, locally advanced cancers of the head and neck region and superficial cutaneous and extracutaneous melanomas.

The Columbia University Center for Radiological Research (CRR) was founded more than 75 years ago to better understand the human health risks associated with exposure to ionizing radiation exposure. It is the oldest and largest such research center in the world. The Center's efforts are focused on unraveling the biological and molecular mechanisms underlying radiation effects in cells, tissues, organ systems and living organisms and how radiation exposure affects human health. Its primary mission is to provide an unbiased, comprehensive and independent source of scientific information about radiation risks to governmental agencies, elected officials, non-profit institutions and private entities to enable them to make sound, evidence based policy decisions. The CRR also provides basic science training to the next generation of radiobiologists, medical and health physicists and clinical radiologists. The Center's multidisciplinary staff encompasses professionals from diverse fields including molecular biology, cell biology, radiation physics, computational physics, engineering, radiation oncology and public health.

Travel outside the Earth's protective atmosphere, magnetosphere, and gravitational field can harm human health, and understanding such harm is essential for successful manned spaceflight. Potential effects on the central nervous system (CNS) are particularly important. A vigorous ground-based cellular and animal model research program will help quantify the risk to the CNS from space radiation exposure on future long distance space missions and promote the development of optimized countermeasures.

Gioacchino Failla American scientist

Gioacchino Failla was an Italian-born American physicist. A pioneer in both biophysics and radiobiology, he was particularly noted for his work on the role of radiation as a cause of cancer and genetic mutation. He was born in Castelbuono in the Province of Palermo and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1906. After his retirement from Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research in 1960, he was appointed Senior Scientist Emeritus in the Radiological Physics Division of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. He was killed in a car accident near the laboratory at the age of 70.

Miriam Dorothy (Posner) Finkel was a radiobiologist who made significant contributions to molecular biology.

Anne Louise Rosenberg is an American surgical oncologist retired from practice in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

References

  1. Grahn, D; Wright, B.J.; Carnes, B.A.; Williamson, F.S.; Fox, C (1995). "Studies of acute and chronic radiation injury at the Biological and Medical Research Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 1970-1992: The JANUS Program Survival and Pathology Data". doi:10.2172/10124634. OSTI   10124634.Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. Paunesku, David, ed. (September 2007). "Janus Mouse Tissue Search". Northwestern University, Department of Radiation Oncology.
  3. Haley, Benjamin, ed. (February 2009). "Janus Dog Tissue Search". Northwestern University, Department of Radiation Oncology.
  4. Paunesku, Tatjana; Zhang, Yueru; Gemmell, M. Anne; Woloschak, Gayle E. (2000). "p53 gene deletions in radiation-induced tumors". Leukemia Research. 24 (6): 511–517. doi:10.1016/s0145-2126(00)00005-9. PMID   10781686.