Xème réunion du groupe de contact FNRS « Stress oxydant » : « Dommages à l’ADN et réponse génotoxique »

Description

The study of the interaction of charged particles with living matter is of prime importance to the fields of radiotherapy, radioprotection and space radiobiology.
Particle accelerators and their associated equipment are proven to be helpful tools in performing basic science in all of these fields. Indeed, they can accelerate virtually any ions to a given energy and flux and let them interact with living matter either in vivo or in vitro. Usually radiobiological and radiotherapy studies are performed with a broad beam configuration, as homogeneous as possible over a given irradiation field. This uniform beam follows Poisson’s law in term of particle number delivered to the cells. However, even if Poisson’s distribution is well known and understood, its effects on different endpoints such as survival fraction in case of in vitro clonogenic assay have not yet been taken into account. In this context, we describe here the current status of a Monte Carlo (MC) code that models the in vitro irradiation of a monolayer of adherent cells with a broad beam of charged particles. This MC code predicts survival fraction for different doses and estimates  and  radiosensitivity parameters. Physical and biological inputs, such as linear energy transfer, cell and nucleus sizes, yield of double strand breaks (DSBs) and half time of DSB repair are needed. Three cases will be implemented: the usual LQ behaviour, low dose hyper-radiosensitivity and the bystander effect. Preliminary results of our simulations are presented and compared with experimental data obtained for A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells following irradiation with proton, alpha or carbon ions.

Period	11 May 2012
Event type	Conference
Location	Mons, Belgium