Radiation-induced lung injury and the potential of Lamellasomes as radio-protectants

One in ten patients who receive radiotherapy to treat lung cancer experience respiratory symptoms weeks to months after treatment that arise as a consequence of normal lung tissue being exposed to radiation. The lung disease that develops can significantly impair their quality of life and can be fatal. Predicting which individual patients are susceptible is currently not possible and overarching limits are therefore placed on the amount of radiotherapy any patient is allowed to receive. An unfortunate consequence of these limits is that many patients will not receive the optimal dose of radiation necessary to cure their cancer. Finding ways of protecting the normal lung from radiation injury is therefore a priority. An early change following radiotherapy is the release of lamellar bodies (LBs) from specific cells deep in the lung. We believe that this may be a protective response to limit the immediate damage that occurs – particularly in relation to limiting radiation-induced oxidative stress. This proposal will determine whether lamellasomes, which are LB mimics, can play a protective role in this context. We will use novel laboratory-based organ culture techniques to test this hypothesis, before applying that knowledge to protect an animal model from the effects of lung radiotherapy.